Word: polynesian
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Something strange is happening in television: the rise of VTV, voyeur television. Despite Survivor's gross-outs, its dark premise and its wall-to-wall cheesiness--the faux-Lion King sound track, the "tribal councils" held in what looks like a Holiday Inn Polynesian lounge circa 1963, the somber narration of Jeff Probst, former host of VH1's Rock 'n' Roll Jeopardy! and challenger to Regis for luckiest-man-in-America status--despite all this, viewers have embraced the desert-island soap with fascination and bemused contempt. Does Dirk have a crush on Kelly? Will Ramona throw up again...
...meets me at sunset on the Namotu resort patio, decked with torches and stone idols, which lend our sit-down an odd Polynesian-honeymoon quality. "All the great stories are about our battle with loneliness," Hanks once said. "That's what I always end up being drawn toward." But, I suggest to him, it's more than that; it's a specific, homesick subgenre of loneliness. Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, Hanks' man-children in Forrest Gump and Big and even Toy Story--all share one universally sympathetic struggle: fate blows them off course...
Nothing but the sound of waves foaming against black volcanic rock. A man sits alone at a desk reading verses of the Bible aloud to himself. Three white crosses stand desolate atop a bare green hill. All across the empty, silent island--a kind of Polynesian Scotland--moai, or worn, hollow-eyed statues carved from volcanic stone, are staring back at the new day as if it were...