There is no I in team, but there is a me.

Survivorman or Man vs. Wild? The question looms over the heads of Discovery Channel junkies the world over. Sure, Bear Grylls is a dirty cheater that spends his night in the weston while he is “surviving the night” in the arctic tundra, but c’mon the guy swims in ice water and jumps out of a plane at the beginning of every show! Les Stroud is the O.G. Survivorman that actually spends a week by himself fending off wild beasts and viscous weather, but we sure do spend a lot of time watching time lapses of him walking across fields and scratching himself while he cooks muskrats.

The real difference here is that Bear Grylls has a team of henchmen at his disposal which allows for more dynamic film making and documentation. Grylls spends less time surviving and more time being a showman. He can take risks and show the more extreme exciting side of wilderness survival, even if it makes his reality show a little less real. Les Stroud on the other hand is a one man crew that instructs his viewers how to survive under the pressure of surviving himself. This may hurt the quality of his documentation, but the intimacy he has with his project makes him a more honest reporter. Who is the better survivalist? Do we choose the man who is truly participating at the expense of less freedom? Or do we go with the man who uses a format that allows for more information and experimentation even though he is not participating completely?

In the same way, some anthropologists  have multiple people that assist them in the documenting process so they can focus solely on what they are doing or teaching. Others go it alone and have the advantage of diving deeper into the cultures they study. I believe it is more important to be honest and struggle to communicate your information than to be a great communicator and struggle to be honest. Grylls walks the thin line between the two because he is so knowledgable. Traditional ethnography would state that you cannot learn unless you do which would render Grylls invalid. I don’t have such an easy time writing him off though. Does he “do” enough? It is a hard call to make.