Abstract
Maria Lorena Santos, in “Crusoe Comes to Caramoan: The Survival of American Cultural Imperialism in the Philippines” examines the mass-consumed reality-television-Robinsonade, Survivor, as an example of contemporary literary and cinematic spinoffs. Derived from the Swedish program Expedition Robinson, the highly successful US version capitalizes on the popularity of exoticism and of “roughing it” in a desolate locale: modern Americans are marooned away from civilization, “pitted against the elements,” and “forced to live off the land.” The Philippines, dubbed a location “both beautiful and treacherous” has been the site of four seasons of the US version; the Caramoan islands in Camarines Sur have hosted two American seasons and at least eight more incarnations of the show with “castaways” from France, Sweden, and Bulgaria. This essay reads the Survivor narrative, especially seasons 25 and 26 of the American version set in Caramoan, as a repackaging of Robinson Crusoe’s proto-imperialist themes—more specifically as simulation and reification of American cultural hegemony in the Philippines reformulated as entertainment. Crusoe’s dominion over the island, his embodying of the Anglo-Saxon spirit in the conquest of the cannibals and “civilizing”/subjugation of Friday, and his reconstruction of the land as part of the Empire parallel the usurping of Philippine lands, resources, and culture for foreign use, the (mis)representation of the Philippines as remote and exotic, and the ecological impact that Robinsonade tourism has had on places like Caramoan.
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Santos, M.L. (2021). Crusoe Comes to Caramoan: The Survival of American Cultural Imperialism in the Philippines. In: Clark, S., Yoshihara, Y. (eds) Robinson Crusoe in Asia. Asia-Pacific and Literature in English. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4051-3_14
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