POP CULTURE: Off-key barbarians at the gates

Not everyone deserves to be a star

Greg Beato

American Idol always starts ugly, but this year there's been enough gratuitous cruelty to land the show on PETA's watch-list: Sometimes, the judges' rancor has almost reached levels typically seen only on Internet message boards! Simon and Randy happily mock hapless hopefuls for their stuck-pig glissandos, their failed marriages, the overpowering stench of gangly, stringy, rumpled ordinariness they emit the moment they skulk into Idol's inner sanctum. Even Paula, who has perfected the art of playing dummy to her own ventriloquist—her mouth hasn't moved since Season 3, but words keep coming out—can barely feign gently uplifting discouragement any more. After five seasons, she and her colleagues are sick of the indefatigably mediocre, they're repulsed by plucky, optimistic losers, and they want everyone to know it.

Of course, their showy exasperation at every screechy bedroom superstar who's willing to waste their time is just standard reality TV choreography.

Thousands of aspiring idols camp out at each audition; only dozens get a chance to perform for the cameras. The show's producers could easily reserve that honor for competent contenders, but instead they troll for oddballs, outcasts, the most palpably deluded. That way, the judges get to crush dreams instead of merely nipping at them, and that makes for much better television.

With only a few exceptions, however, the palpably deluded are hardly sympathetic. They appear to be functioning members of society, with their faculties mostly intact. How can they not know they're awful, or average, or good but not great? Why does Simon's viciousness, which clings to his persona the way his skimpy black T-shirts cling to his plumpish man-rack, come as such a shock to them? If it were just one or two people who fit the deluded contestant profile, their inability to handle their inevitable rejections wouldn't seem so unsettling, but it's not. Season after season, in city after city, legions of pod people show up ...

Perhaps the virus that once made people believe they'd been abducted by space aliens has mutated into some even more malignant strain. Or maybe we should just blame it on video games, reality TV and the Internet. Idol's talent pool, after all, is made up of individuals who've grown up believing that they're the most vital force in pop culture. The Xbox always casts them as the action hero. MySpace lets them be their own stalkers. Major newspapers are desperate to give them editorial space once reserved for marquee staffers. Their YouTube contributions are valued more highly than all but the most successful Hollywood franchises. Time magazine celebrates them as Person of the Year. Doritos has asked them to create its Super Bowl ad this year. Why should they settle for a bit part on Idol?

Empowered by the acclaim they constantly receive in the media, emboldened by their LiveJournal.com fanbases, this new generation of temperamental divas enters the American Idol audition room ready to claim the crown that is their birthright. Perhaps in the backs of their minds they recognize their power is primarily a collective phenomenon, but so what? Beyoncé was part of a group once; Justin Timberlake, too. Solo glory is attainable; it just takes a bold move.

Alas, while an army of ants can devastate a highly evolved ecosystem in a matter of weeks, even Paula Abdul can squash a solitary insect with a single semi-lucid rebuff. That's when the blustery, snot-flecked pleading starts, and when the tough love gets even more bruising than that which Dr. Phil dishes out. Idol's audition episodes do function as therapy, but not for desperate nobodies searching for Hollywood angels to confirm their specialness. Instead, it offers temporary, black-hearted solace to those who long for the days when pop culture's gates were a bit more closely guarded.

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