RICHARD RISCHAR

An Idol Reflection

Is a popular TV show a paean of American values or a tuneless Baal?

By Richard Rischar
Given that my research, teaching and performance interests revolve around issues of singing style in popular culture, you might peg me as a wholehearted fan of American Idol. But I do not advocate or dismiss the contest outright. I am more interested in the show as reception history, in the effects American Idol has on students and others, as well as the contradictory sets of values and cultural priorities that American Idol reflects.

Not coincidentally, American Idol was ending just as fall classes began, so I assigned the final two episodes to my students in Music in the United States. We began the course by exploring some basic values and characteristics that one identifies as being “American.” It helped that Alan Wolfe, whose book Moral Freedom every freshman was assigned to read, had visited our very first class. Wolfe’s analytical acumen aside, he was able, using a large and varied interview pool, to demonstrate that as different as Americans can be, we all tend to agree that every American has the right to choose for herself (whether this has to do with abortion, music in a church service or one’s style of dress). A variation of E pluribus unum, I call this unifying characteristic a cultural unity in choice.

Armed with this central characteristic (one might say a paradoxical one), many questions follow: for example, is this right to choose a profound trait or amoral consumerism in the sheep’s clothing of democracy? Suddenly American Idol became more than an idiotic summer-replacement show attempting to combine Star Search, The Real World and Survivor. My students agreed with a premise that the show’s producers have tried to market: American Idol perfectly reflects the basic values of American popular culture and even of the United States, albeit at its worst. But they had many criticisms.

Students fumed that the contestants did not write their own music (which they found unoriginal). They also hated the karaoke nature of the contest. Another common criticism was that the contestants advanced based on looks rather than talent or, at least, their looks held precedence over talent. The vehemence with which they railed against the looks-over-talent aspect, I believe, reflects their own worry that it might be true for them. Students expressed this anxiety by using descriptors like “cookie-cutter,” making comparisons to *NSYNC and Britney Spears and vilifying those American bacchantes, screaming teen-age girls.

On the whole, the students were right about looks being necessary but, interestingly, the final three contestants were not, to me, the best-looking. Here are some “flaws” (noted by me and my students): crooked and gapped teeth, hair that was either flat or looked like an Afro left over from Godspell, big rear end or white-trash appearance. The latter pejorative also raises issues of class and other ideological conflicts. For instance, the program often frames the contestants’ rise in a rags-to-riches context (which is part of the American success myth). Yet ascending so quickly goes against the complementary value of “paying your dues,” prescribed by the American work ethic.

Perhaps the show’s most telling contradiction concerns the way the final contestants advanced: performing live, live adjudication and a weekly voting off of contestants. This exemplifies the American values of democracy, elections, choice, right? But two main factors prevented fair “elections”—the judges and the voting process. The judges were professionals in the music business. Simon Cowell, the pasty-white “villain” of the show is a British producer from the original British series Pop Idol. He often delivered scathing criticism of contestants (with which I nearly always agreed). African-American rhythm-and-blues producer Randy Jackson would mix frank and supportive criticism, while Paula Abdul, a pop/r&b dancer-singer and former cheerleader, offered hyperbolic praise and support.

The producers of the show shrewdly used three judges, knowing these individuals would make “good TV” (especially when they disagreed) and model the process that all consumers experience. We constantly judge products, sales pitches and positions on the fly. When we surf the TV, radio or Web we must judge quickly where to pause. People who remember Star Search, a predecessor in the star-is-born format, compare the shows, but American Idol is more fast-paced. The music directors shortened every song, using compression, fragmentation and simple deletion to offer the heart of a song, going from opening to high note quickly, sometimes within just 30 seconds.

Critics of Chicago in the 1960s or Florida in 2000 will not be surprised to know that although there was a time limit on voting (two hours, starting after the show aired) individuals could vote many times for their favorites by using speed-dial phones and software. The producers claimed this created a “statistically insignificant” impact but offered no evidence, according to Ron Harris of the Associated Press.

But voting and judging pitfalls aside, what about the quality of the performances? Some of the performances were good (some howlingly bad, too, but the producers know that also makes for good TV). In the end, “the people” chose Kelly Clarkson, a Mariah Carey/Faith Hill wannabe from a small town in Texas. She was my favorite, too, for she has the voice, is attractive enough, and gosh darnit, she’s got sass, along with the requisite humility toward the process, sportsmanship, and a clear-eyed acceptance of the hard work she faces. I just pray she won’t burn out her voice as Carey did.

True to American form, there is another American Idol season already in the works but, as with the 2002 segments, I will not be watching until later in the process. I will be too busy introducing my students to Francis Poulenc, Laurie Anderson, John Corigliano, Amelita Galli-Curci, Trent Reznor and other popular musical artists to worry about the next “American Baal.” But I will tune in for more of Simon Cowell’s biting quips. After all, I need more fodder to keep the standards high in the choir’s Valentine’s Day talent-show benefit. •

Richard Rischar, assistant professor of music, came to Dickinson in 2000. He teaches courses in music history, including Music in the U.S., Mozart’s Operas and the Art of Music, and conducts the Dickinson College Choir. His research interests are in American music of all kinds and 19th-century European art music (opera and symphony, in particular).

ROBERT POUND

The Latest American Idolatry

A star is not born with advent of the latest television sensation

By Robert Pound
One might assume that a contemporary composer of art music would thoroughly disdain and loathe extravagant, superficial, vulgar entertainment; indeed I confess I do not care much for Rossini. But contemporary equivalents such as the optimistically titled American Idol seem to me a less harmful form of diversion than say, bear baiting, dog or cock fighting, the numbing violence of most action and horror movies, and even celebrity amateur golf (for example, Jack Nicholson in action). So far as I can ascertain, the only victims of the show are the arguably misguided egos and ambitions of unsuccessful contestants and those producers and marketing directors who fail to meet earnings projections. Nevertheless, American Idol embodies curiously contradictory principles that are more generally notable in our society and which certainly have more serious implications.

At one point, second-place contestant Justin Guarini says in response to the judges’ verdict, “I really respect your opinion, but what did you guys [the audience] think?” The audience’s response, anticipated by Guarini, is wildly enthusiastic. We are inclined to wonder if the contestant truly does respect anything about the judges or the contest’s process, save that it is ultimately a show for an audience. American Idol is no more than that: a contest, an opportunity to choose sides, an occasion to root for an underdog or any other dog, a Hit (or more probably Miss) Parade, a circus, and in some respects, a freak show. More important, it is yet another opportunity for the voting audience to appear to have a say in the matter and for the nonvoting audience to feel it had that opportunity and chose not to take it (an opportunity not unlike CNN’s Talk Back Live, NPR’s Listener Response, letters to the editor and even commentary columns).

The producers who created this aquarium for (pop-)cultural freedom contrived a combination sure to sell: the illusions of freedom and power and the reaffirmation of agreement in a popular vote. The show gives the audience the illusion of a fair democratic process. The impression is that each opinion counts and that each audience member’s decision is significant and is anxiously awaited by a ravenous and needful public which will, in turn, reaffirm the worth of the audience’s choice by its listening preference, evidenced by CD and ticket purchases.

In reality, the show’s process is something quite different. A particular group of persons working for a particular network creates all the criteria, constraints and boundary conditions for a process that empowers a carefully delimited audience (too bad for those who have televisions but no phones or cell phones; never mind those who do not care for the narrow band of musical styles represented). By this process, the select audience chooses a new idol for the public from a group of contestants already selected through a system of local and regional auditions. The final number of contestants appearing on the show has been drastically reduced from the original number of entrants by the intercession of an unknown quantity of persons with unknown qualifications. Naturally (or un-), even the judges are selected by the show’s creators according to unspecified criteria. Furthermore, the contestants perform viciously truncated editions of songs.

The producers’ statement that plausible and probable vote tampering is “statistically insignificant” is striking not merely for its lack of statistical support or other validation; the remark, more importantly, demonstrates yet another way in which the network controls—or at least intends to control—the final decision. But once the Chosen One is packaged and returned to the greater public (a less-select audience) in the form of purchasable commodities, there is no guarantee that the public will, in the end, worship this idol with a competitively high quantity of ticket and CD purchases. This makes it equally uncertain that s/he will measure up to pre-existing idols according to indicative charts and polls.

In reality the show’s producers have created an artificial democratization of the process by which an unknown personality becomes a pop idol. Pop idols like serious artists (which is not to say the two never converge) emerge by a vague, serpentine and, certainly unpredictable, route fueled by an indeterminate and inconsistent mix of hard work, ambition, talent, self-promotion, influential acquaintances and coincidences. In that process—a natural one?—peers, colleagues and anonymous audiences have a vote at every juncture without the help of network producers plotting the course. It is a process propelled by numerous agencies backing hundreds of unknown artists, gambling extravagantly in the hope that one or a few of the unknowns will become stars. Audiences do vote, but not at once, not in a united, synchronous, carefully arranged election, and not choosing from a select number of singers performing essentially the same kind of music; they vote with their wallets, purchasing CDs and tickets.

Contrary to the illusion, American Idol and contests like it fail to affirm the American Dream, for they assume a slew of common fallacies as their foundation: popular vote in the end reasonably determines value; a nonrepresentative electorate’s majority is equivalent to the will of the public at large; popular vote can determine the preference of the greater public. A carefully controlled, easily skewed democratic process of a nonrepresentative minority is not democratic. Minced pop-song fragments are not pop songs. A pop idol who fails to win broad public acclaim comparable to established idols may be someone’s idol, but s/he is not a popular success.

American Idol—feigned purpose, artificial process and insignificant result—is utterly meaningless. I suspect that, in the not-too-distant future, even the members of the electorate will prefer listening to and watching other personalities rather than worshiping at the feet of their own graven image. •

Robert Pound, assistant professor of music, joined the Dickinson College faculty in 1998. He teaches courses in music theory and composition, and he conducts the Dickinson College-Community Orchestra. He is active as a composer and conductor.