http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/arts/television/new-starts-on-live-free-or-die-survivor-and-utopia.html 2014-11-23 06:54:46 New Starts on ‘Live Free or Die,’ ‘Survivor’ and ‘Utopia’ Participants in a recent wave of reality shows like “Live Free or Die” and “Living in Secret” make do with less or make a clean breast of things. === Near the turn of the millennium, no man in sports — or popular culture, perhaps — was more reviled than John Rocker. In a Where else would Mr. Rocker go to be reborn but reality television? He was a contestant on the current season of “ What he wanted from “Survivor,” most likely, was something of a fresh start, an opportunity to wash away the stains of his professional life and be reborn. Step in front of the cameras and be free — such is the mantra of a recent wave of reality shows, which take the American impulse toward renewal one step further, by enabling people to shuck off the identities they’d spent decades forming and have a chance at starting anew. This fall, Fox began an ambitious show, “Utopia,” which isolated 15 participants on a California ranch with minimal amenities (but dozens of cameras) and tasked them with building a society from scratch. On the National Geographic Channel, “Live Free or Die” follows a handful of people living in extreme anti-modern fashion. Both of these shows were rooted in the premise that capitalist society is, in effect, broken, and demands a severe head-cleaning to rid oneself of its evils. This is a shift for reality television, which has often been used as a vehicle to a better, more-enhanced self. In the 2000s, reality TV tended toward ubiquitous makeover shows, from the charitable “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” to the smilingly sinister “America’s Next Top Model” to the ghastly theatrics of “The Swan.” These were game shows of a different sort: Subject yourself to the cameras, and you would be rewarded handsomely. Now reality TV is in retreat. Series about those who work hardscrabble blue-collar jobs have given way to series that romanticize those who live with very little, off the grid. You could run a whole network just with shows about living in Alaska — “ Those programs fetishize a pre-technological, pre-capitalist mode of being. On each, participants often talk about their reasons for leaving civilization behind — some thoughtful, some naïve. “ But the real world was never far away. One of the signature tensions of “Utopia” — and there were many — was over whether the society being built on the show should mirror the one out in the real world. More often than not, it did — no one brought any Josh, a contractor, got plumbing and electricity up and running fairly quickly. Within weeks, there was private enterprise. Attempts at nondemocratic government systems largely flopped. Utopia, in this case, wasn’t much more than the comfort of the familiar. “ Thorn is a former schoolteacher — he didn’t like “being on someone else’s terms” — who has opted to live in a hut he built and makes all his clothes by hand, from available materials. These are people who have considered what America has to offer, and more or less turned away. And they are keen to spread their message: Thorn’s young daughter comes to stay with him, and helps him with projects, while in a recent episode Colbert took on a nephew and tried to guide him in the ways of the wild. And they try not to poison themselves with money exchange. Colbert traps beaver and raccoon and mails the pelts to be auctioned for money, which doesn’t add up to much — his annual expenses are around $2,000, he says. (A spokesman for National Geographic Channel confirmed that the show’s stars were paid for their participation in the series, though that income source isn’t alluded to in the show itself.) For these participants, who long ago went rogue, the cameras are there merely to bear witness. In some cases, though, the cameras are an agent of reverse transformation, as on “ Unlike the former series “Intervention,” here the ones who are suffering are choosing to reveal their secret lives. The premiere episode follows Claudia, a shopping addict, and Sophie, a prostitute (those are not their real names) who want to let go of their identities and reclaim their old selves, which they do by confessing to a loved one. The show has a neat conceit — the protagonists’ faces are obscured until they reveal themselves, real names included, suggesting that they are not truly whole until they have wiped themselves clean. Again: this is reality TV as scouring pad, and an argument that the better self is the one who’s walked away from society’s temptations. As for Mr. Rocker, his tenure on “Survivor” was short and fraught. He was bitter to teammates and opponents alike. A few other contestants recognized him from the real world and began to poke at him about his past. After one confrontation with a female member of the opposing team got particularly hot, Mr. Rocker coolly said, “If you were a man, I would knock your teeth out.” He was voted out shortly thereafter. Stripped down to his essence, Mr. Rocker proved to be as bilious as ever. But at least he got what he wanted — everyone saw him for exactly who he was.