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The ClubHouse: Archives: ----GENERAL ARCHIVES----: General Archives - Jan-Feb: NEW Vid Caps

Moondance

Monday, February 25, 2002 - 02:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
http://www.survivorfever.net/earlyshow_2_25.html

Car54

Monday, February 25, 2002 - 03:23 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Here is the info from Monday's Early Show preview:
from the CBS site:

This Time Food Is Not A Problem
Monday, Feb. 25, 2002 - 12:00 AM ET
CBS
Jon Frankel reports

NEW YORK --Survivor: Marquesas, the fourth installment of the CBS reality series, debuts Thursday, Feb. 28. So, all week, The Early Show takes you behind the scenes of the Nuku Hiva production, where National Correspondent Jon Frankel spent some time recently.

If you've seen any of the promos so far for Survivor: Marquesas, you know that it's back to the beach for the hit reality series. But what sets this show apart from the original is what's on the menu.
"The biggest change for this Survivor is, we're not giving them any food, we're not giving them any water, we're not giving them any fire. So whatever they get, they're going to have to find, or create, or make on their own," explains Survivor host Jeff Probst. Tough talk considering the conditions past contestants had to endure.

"I'm concerned it will be a bit gamey," said former Survivor Greg Buis about his meal. "We don't have the gravy we were looking for. Because when cooking rat, sauce is of the utmost importance."

Though Richard Hatch boasted about the weight he lost. Jerri Manthey was not too happy about it. "The whole hunger thing… for me has been a huge hurdle."

Tina Wesson explained best when she said, "nutritionally, our bodies are going into shock."

But food sources once hard to come by on Survivors past are plentiful on Nuku Hiva.

"This is a natural produce isle. There are coconuts, pineapples, bananas, and, of course, the mango. The list is endless. We have a lot of fruits here," says Tracy Teuria. She is a Nuku Hiva local who gave the contestants a crash course on what was edible on this island of abundance.

"There's plenty of protein around. It's just a matter of catching it. We have wild roosters and chickens; we have wild goat in the mountains. Fish in the sea? No problem," she says.

And to make sure they could catch those fish, contestants were taught how to make their own tackle, something Nuku Hiva natives have done for centuries.

"To make a fishing line, we have a tree known as a hibiscus tree. Take off the outer bark to make rope. To make a fishing hook, you go and get a branch of thorny acachea, cut it in the V, and cut up other thorns and bind that all together with coconut husk string. Wrap that around, and that makes a good hook," she explains.

So don't expect to see the dramatic weight loss from the contestants we've come to expect from past shows.

Car54

Monday, February 25, 2002 - 03:26 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
From the National Post:

The tribe has eaten
Mysteries of the Marquesas: It's Survivor's new locale, but Melville, Gauguin and the cannibals got there first

When Survivor: Africa ended in January, the after-party hosted by Bryant Gumbel revealed, typically, nothing surprising. There were the usual congratulations, audience questions and backslapping. Series host Jeff Probst, though, did have the privilege of unveiling the single interesting fact, which was the setting for the next chapter of the show: the Marquesas Islands.

And collectively, millions of expectant viewers shrugged. Could Survivor producer Mark Burnett have made, for once, a fatal miscalculation? While his program looks to be the sole survivor of the reality-TV sweepstakes, its position is slipping a bit; the show was recently overtaken in the ratings by arch-rival Friends.

Survivor: Marquesas has to be a gamble for Burnett. After all, the success of Survivor is so intricately connected to its setting. Survivor takes place absolutely, entirely outside -- it's an outdoor hit for an indoor society. With the exception of tent interiors and a few shots of challenge winners who got to hang out in a Malaysian hotel, a cantina and an AIDS hospice (yes, really), there haven't been many indoor shots in the whole franchise. As integral to the show as its lurid quality -- the backstabbing, the cat fighting -- is the impression left by the great outdoors, on whichever continent those outdoors may be.

The first outing, with its generic Gilligan's Island quality and screen-saver scenery, established the visual tone, even if we didn't know much about Malaysia's Pulau Tiga itself. The next two -- the Herbert River in Australia and the Shaba National Reserve in the Kenyan savannah -- had such strong National Geographic-issue identities they couldn't help but lure viewers. We were familiar with the places -- kangaroos! lions! -- without ever having been to them. This time around, Survivor was to have taken place in Jordan. If not for the events of last September, it would have stayed there. Enter the Marquesas.

The Marquesas (pronounced mar-KAY-sis) may not roll easily off the tongue, but that's not to say this area of French Polynesia -- a widespread territory that includes Tahiti and the nearby French nuclear testing ranges -- hasn't cast its own cultural shadow. We may know more about the Marquesas than we think. Paul Gauguin is buried on Hiva Oa. Thor Heyerdahl wrote about the islands in Fatu-Hiva. Robert Louis Stevenson lived there for a time. More recently, Canadian writer Ronald Wright wrote about the area in his latest novel, Henderson's Spear. And Paul Theroux's ambitious chronicle of travelling the South Seas, The Happy Isles of Oceania, included a chapter on the Marquesas.

"Where are the sandy beaches?" writes Theroux, about the Marquesas' Nuku Hiva, a place rather unlike Pulau Tiga. "Where are the translucent lagoons? There are not many in the Marquesas, and they are hard to find."

A rocky archipelago, formed by volcanoes, the Marquesas are unlike other nearby sandy atolls. "It is almost impossible to overstate the ruggedness of the islands," writes Theroux, "the almost unclimbable steepness of their heights or their empty valleys. And at the head of every valley was a great gushing waterfall, some of them hundreds of feet high."

Theroux describes an archeologist's dream of unexplored ruins buried by lush jungle -- not a ghost town but a ghost island. The population of Nuku Hiva, once thought to have been in the tens of thousands, was decimated by smallpox, opium and Peruvian slave ships and is now about 2,400. For Theroux, the ruins of old Nuku Hiva rival that of Guatamala or Belize.

Survivor viewers may not have read Herman Melville's first book, Typee (currently ranked number 82,331 on Amazon.com), but that book, too, is set on Nuku Hiva (the island on which the next Survivor series occurs), inspired by the time Melville spent in the valley of Taipivai in the 1840s. His own inner location scout must have been working overtime; owing to both the setting and a sensational account of the lives of South Sea islanders, Typee, published in 1846, was a gigantic hit, generally feted in England, though loathed in America.

Melville's wry, rollicking bit of creative non-fiction follows mariners Tom and Toby as they jump ship and escape into Nuku Hiva's lush interior. They plan to lurk in the hills, above the natives -- who evidently venture not too far above sea level -- and subsist on coconut and breadfruit. Note to Survivor contestants: The fruit is found closer to the sea.

The show's contestants won't have to deal with the same dangers of island life with which Tom and Toby had to contend, most of all, tribal warfare. Though small, the island was divided among hostile tribes (Melville notes at least three) who seemed to skirmish, we're told, over the inconsistent crop of breadfruit. (Although, Jeff Probst does tell us that the show's modern-day Toms and Tobys, unlike contestants in the previous three Survivor series, will be given no supplies -- an ode to ancient Marquesan life, perhaps.)

Typee's pair, for their part, overcome by hunger and exposure, eventually descend the island's treacherous slopes. They want to make contact with the evidently friendly Happar tribe, and avoid the heavily tattooed Typees, practitioners, it's rumoured, of cannibalism. But they eventually fall in with the Typees anyway.

Melville fans may bristle at the thought of Survivor laying claim to Herman's old stomping grounds. There isn't much common territory between the author's works and Survivor (except for Lex's Ahab-like quest for vengeance during Survivor: Africa). But it turns out that Melville was subject to the same rules of public attraction as any exiled Survivor contestant; fame of any kind, literary, geographical or otherwise, is fleeting. Perversely, when Melville died in New York in 1891, he did so, according to The New York Times, "an absolutely forgotten man," having gone back to work as a customs officer after years spent writing.

The Marquesas have had to deal with their own inattention, as well. By many accounts, the Marquesas, despite the scenery and ruins, had, for years, been chronically underdeveloped for tourism.

Of the islands' fate, Melville speculates, early in Typee, "... these islands, undisturbed for years, relapsed into their previous obscurity ... Once in the course of a half century, to be sure, some adventurous rover would break in upon their peaceful repose, and, astonished at the unusual scene would be almost tempted to claim the merit of a new discovery."

As Melville was rediscovered, so were the islands. The Marquesas' latest half-century is up, with Survivor and CBS the adventurous rovers in this case. It remains to be seen whether or not Nuku Hiva will grab viewers' attention as well as Pulau Tiga, Australia or Africa. Judging by the accounts of the well-travelled, it's more than enchanting enough for the small screen. And Tahiti Presse, the local news agency, seems confident that tourists will suddenly be drawn to these most remote (and expensive) islands.

But at what price? Global attention has not been good for Marquesans in the past. As Melville writes in Typee, "Alas for the poor savages when exposed to the influence of these polluting examples! Humanity weeps over the ruin thus remorselessly inflicted upon them by their European civilizers."

Or American broadcasters.