American Idol, whose eighth season I am currently watching as I have watched every season for the last six years, is a dazzling exercise in psychological revelation and manipulation, played out right before our eyes to the beat of snaredrums and the shudder of electric bass. Don't be so quick to dismiss Idol as corporate/populist puffery -- whoops; too late; many among you are now clicking your back-arrows to make a quick escape. That's the first bit of mind-gaminess about it: In intellectual circles, Idol does not merit conversation. People laugh when I say I watch it. It's below contempt, belonging to the netherworld of trailer parks, novelty welcome mats and Cheetos. In that sense it's a class thing. Many intellectuals think Idol is below them. They dismiss it as fodder for the ignorant.
Wrong! (Oops, did that sound ignorant?) Idol reveals so much about American thinking -- about hopes and dreams, about business and the packaging of human beings, about gamesmanship and rivalry and desperation, about judgment, about what attracts us and repels us in each other, about joy and sorrow and this point in history at which raw emotion is captured on camera and onstage. This is a time and place in which young Americans are raised to believe that they can and will and must be superstars. They're actually counting on that million-dollar contract.
This season, some of the show's shiny veils have dropped away, baring its grossest manipulations -- through overconfidence? Or do the powers-that-be also believe we are stupid? And/or have they simply ceased to care? During audition week, what savvy fans call "pimping" began at its flagrantly baldest. Contestants with the saddest sob stories got the most limelight: the orphan, the homeless girl, the blind savant, the hottie with MS, the guy whose wife had died less than a month before. More than in past seasons, finalists were clearly chosen based on looks and type, as a ploy to attract all demographics: Disabled. Christian. Gay. Single mom. Soulful African-American. Sassy Latino. Jewish geek. Roughneck. Welder. Cute classic blonde. Cute classic brunette. (When one classic brunette finalist was disqualified for conflict-of-interest reasons, she was replaced with a lookalike.) With this strategy, Idol's producers are banking on tribalism, a primitive survival strategy that is resurging in modern America's affinity for identity politics. Our avid neo-tribalism would sadden our forebears, who nurtured notions of a melting pot. But from the producers' standpoint, more money can be made from a populace that buys songs based solely on the fact that they are sung by those who resemble us or represent us -- in ethnicity, career or class -- than from a populace that simply assesses a random group of singers on talent alone.
There's so much more. The way certain contestants inspire love and others loathing, both unleashing floods of online buzz, which reveals what the public finds charming and what we cannot bear. Thus far this season, we realize: We despise narcissism (Tatiana). Over-the-top showiness sharply divides us (Adam). So does savvy comedy (Nick/Normund). And, perhaps most heartening of all: America is still a meritocracy. We can spot talent and we will reward it, even if it comes in oddball packages with huge foreheads and beet-hued hair and public-speaking problems. Allison, I'm looking at you. And cheering.
