American Idol (Tuesday, May 16, 2006, FOX)

by Ari Abramowitz
18 May 2006

If you’ve made it this far you’re either an American Idol fan yourself or you are itching for an excuse to get raving mad about something. There’s plenty here for whichever way you want to lean. At its worst, the show exists purely (impurely?) for commercial purposes, spotlighting mediocre talents in an atmosphere of media-inflated hype. (Then again, these criticisms could have applied to most SEX PISTOLS shows.)

American Idol is not high art nor is it the pinnacle of human creativity. However, every night it’s on, it presents young musical performers who are trying to doing their best and who put everything they have on the line, in front of however-many millions of people. More importantly, it provides a common cultural experience, something everyone can see, feel, interpret, and share. Everyone knows what most of the songs sound like and can discuss whether they were performed well or bombed. Everyone can discuss how a given staging device worked. Everyone can discuss if a performer was really feeling a song, how deeply it seemed to connect with them, and how closely their performance came to the sublime. Everyone can connect with everyone else. How many cultural experiences are there like that?

All of the Idol performances lend themselves to analysis and critique just as all other performances do. To enjoy the show is not a promise to buy every performer’s disc when it comes out, nor is it a promise to buy the products of whatever corporate sponsors there may be. There is good and bad here just as there is anywhere. The major difference is that everyone can, and does, offer up whatever praise or criticism they like. In most areas, specialized knowledge is required—everyone is not always a worthy critic or analyst. But here, due to the unabashedly commercial intentions of the program, the simplicity of the performances and the absolute “pure” entertainment value of the entire endeavor, everyone is not only allowed but also invited to put in however many cents they like.

In fact, the viewer contributions further the trajectory of the show, and are thereby essentially an actual part of the program (though they do not get to share in revenues). And this program runs all week, from the evaluation of the performances, to the reality-check of the results, to the speculations into the future, all the while provoking discussion about the judges’ behavior, their predictions, and all sorts of other topics that seemingly produce ten zillion messages on just as many message boards. No cover charge. All you have to do to enter is watch the show that week. That’s pretty close to free-entry.

My major point: To enable as many people as possible to engage in the discussion of music has got to be a good thing, right? In this light, it’s less perverse than it may otherwise seem to call Idol “punk”—there is an ethos of democracy to both genres (as Idol seems to have become sui generis), at least ostensibly. In Idol, the victors are supposedly chosen by universal vote—discussion is clearly open to everyone. The Punk manifesto, as it amorphously exists, also seems to make the claim of opening Rock & Roll (and music in general) to any and all. This line of argument must inevitably break down somewhere, although I’m not sure which of the two is, in fact, less democratic.

There’s a time and place for reading up on the conceptualism of LANSING-DREIDEN. There’s always an extra dollar or two for a DINOSAUR JR. reissue. There are cool discussions to be had on the increasingly heavy vibe of SLEATER-KINNEY and the place of women in hard rock. But it’s also fun to wonder why CLIVE DAVIS, one of the most successful record executives of the past half-century, matched songs to performers less successfully than the three Idol judges. It’s fun to watch people try to attain three-minutes of perfection. It’s fun to discuss what they could have done or should still do to catch that moment. It’s fun to compare your line of thinking to someone (or everyone) else’s line of thinking. Where does your thought converge with the mainstream and where does it diverge? Maybe you can see something in the performer that no one else can. If only they did this. If only they did that. Maybe you can see yourself up there, or maybe a friend. Could you take the pressure? What song would you do? Could you make it work? Could you make it connect?

The American Idol experience rolls Monday-morning-quarterbacking, post-Oscars-declarations and every other piece of pop commentary into one. Everyone gets to have one’s own opinions, but also gets to play with them and with everyone else’s—people get to understand and respond to each others thought—most importantly, people get to engage. Heck, it’s represented in essentially every piece of the “information revolution” as practiced in the lived-in world: American Idol is found in blogs, emails, podcasts, newspapers, and conversations, and on message boards and TiVO, etc.—almost every form of media and communication all at once. If we include our imaginations in this hubbub, perhaps we’ll be seeing someone do “God Save the Queen” on the show next year.

Filed under pop TV