MzzJoplin
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Thaid no more ...
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The invisible woman ...
« on: May 31st, 2002, 5:14pm » |
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The Invisible Woman
by Chris Wright
The main question regarding the puzzling outcome of Survivor: Marquesas is not how Vecepia Towery won. Rather, it's why did executive producer Mark Burnett leave his eventual champ -- who has proven in post-show interviews to have a bubbly, friendly personality -- on the periphery for virtually the entire season?
It's too bad, because his editing choice put a damper on what has otherwise proven to be the best Survivor season since Richard Hatch strutted the beaches of Palau Tiga. It also went against one of the core elements that has made the series so successful: the "creation" of characters whom the audience can grow to love or hate, resulting in an ending that leaves viewers agonized (Palua Tiga victor Rich), pleased (Africa's Ethan), or somewhere in between (Australia's Tina).
But since we never got to know Vecepia beyond the "black Christian woman" label, we were never were able to develop strong sympathy or antipathy for her. So when she won, we could only mutter a collective "Huh?" Much of the fun of Survivor lies in the emotional payoff at the end, and in this case, there was none. It was like one of those annoying Murder, She Wrote episodes where the killer turns out to be that janitor guy who was onscreen for 10 seconds.
This is not to say that the eventual winner has always been the "main character" of each season. That, of course, would make things entirely too predictable. First season winner Rich was a leading figure on Palau Tiga, along with Rudy and to a lesser extent, Sue; in many ways it felt like "their" story. Subsequent winners Tina and Ethan, on the other hand, were really supporting characters compared to the likes of Season 2's Colby, Jerri and Keith, and Season 3's Lex, Teresa and Tom. But at least they received large chunks of screen time and were shown to be pivotal players (for example: Tina brought together Colby and Keith to wrest control of the Ogakor tribe from evil Jerri; Ethan plotted to throw an immunity challenge so he could oust Silas). Vecepia, on the other hand, was often only shown commenting about Sean, talking religion or complaining that there was "too much drama" in the camp. She seemed to lack her own agency.
This contrasts sharply with Sean and Kathy, who stood out from the beginning -- he as a racially self-aware comic, she as an annoying, talkative weirdo. They changed as the game progressed (on CBS' The Early Show, Kathy said this was deliberate on her part: "I had an epiphany. I decided to shut up"), but rarely strayed from the editing spotlight. Perhaps Burnett found them entertaining. "Kathy ended up being in the show a lot, because Kathy had very core things to say,” he told Vermont TV station WCAX. Or perhaps he wanted to mislead viewers into thinking one of them would win. But either way, along with Boston Rob, Kathy and Sean were the most fascinating Survivor characters in a long time. Most of the other Marquesan castaways were more fully drawn, too.
Survivor viewers who tuned in to The Early Show the morning after the finale, however, might not have even recognized Vecepia. This Vecepia was talkative, bubbly and extra-friendly, not at all her somewhat boring, reserved (except when winning challenges) onscreen self. Granted, she'd just won a million bucks, but doing so didn't abruptly change Ethan's introverted personality last time around.
So what happened? Was Vecepia's true nature chopped out in the editing room or suppressed by the contestant herself as part of her strategy? And why edit out so much of her strategy? Some of it, it turns out, was brilliant. For instance, Vecepia told The Early Show that at Maraamu’s second Tribal Council (where Patricia was voted out), she deliberately made a big deal of Hunter being the tribe’s leader. As a result, she said, he acted more dominant, resulting in his own eviction three days later. “I wanted to get rid of the people that everyone thought would win, so an underdog would win,” she said.
We saw none of this; there was no Vecepia confessional taking credit for Hunter’s departure. Instead, Boston Rob and his Godfather complex seemed to be the impetus behind it at the time, and, arguably, Rob's attitude adjustment problems were stealing the show's limelight at that point.
Vecepia remained well below the radar for the duration of the game, and perhaps Burnett’s low-key approach to her character was meant to reflect that. But someone can play Survivor under the radar and still get sufficient screen time (Palau Tiga’s Colleen comes to mind as an example). Vecepia could have been a great character simply because she overcame so many obstacles to win: being part of a minority group that had never done well on the show; starting out in the ever-losing Maraamu tribe; getting swapped to Rotu along with disliked members Rob and Sean; getting pegged as No. 3 on the Rotu alliance’s hit list; winding up with her back against the wall when Kathy sided with Paschal and Neleh at the final five.
She’s the first winner to come from the post-merge minority tribe (in terms of original members) and the first to win without being part of a game-long dominant alliance. (Talk about reversals -- online fans now wonder if all the backward shots this season referred to Vecepia as well as, or instead of, Neleh.) In short, Vecepia is the most unlikely -- and fascinating -- Survivor winner yet.
But Burnett never let us get to know her, and so we were left with a finish we couldn’t even react to (other than, “Darn, why couldn’t Kathy have won?”). Maybe he was simply trying to hide his winner, but there are other, more complex ways to do that. And die-hard fans have come to expect and rely on that complexity.
And so Survivor: Marquesas, so successful in so many ways, ultimately lost a bit of its luster. When it mattered most, Mark Burnett, who’s “written” so many fascinating characters the last two years, succumbed to that most basic of beginning-filmmaker bugaboos: bad character development.
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