So yes, because Ariel loves it so, I’ve been watching the opening episodes of “American Idol.” And boy oh boy, fans of “Star Wars” must have been cringing.
First there was a guy who showed up in–swear to God–Princess Leia’s slave outfit. Nowadays Carrie Fisher wouldn’t look good in it, but this guy, easily seventy, eighty pounds overweight and fairly hirstute, was just achingly awful to look upon. Paula Abdul suggested that he get his chest hair removed and, if he did, promised he’d have the chance to audition that his ensemble was precluding. To her subsequent shock, he returned after having his entire torso waxed. Did he then launch into a surprisingly, achingly heartfelt love ballad and turn the tide? Of course not. He started gyrating while singing a Spice Girls number which Simon mercifully cut short after less than two bars. Actually Cowell was probably tempted to hit a couple of bars just to blur the memory.
So who showed up later? A self-proclaimed geek who was wearing her hair in the Princess Leia buns. She didn’t make the cut either, which she promptly blamed on the fact that she was, in fact, a geek, and therefore that was the reason she was turned down. Well, no, the truth was that her voice was marginal at best, and her deportment merely served to be the final straw. But she set herself up to lose so she could blame the world for her own shortcomings. I think we all know plenty of people like this.
Don’t fans have enough of a reputation as fools and freaks without stuff like this contributing to it?
At least the creepy guy who advanced on Abdul while singing a song about stalking her (her body language–arms folded, legs crossed–conveyed just how freaked she was by him, and I can’t blame her) wasn’t wearing a Darth Vader outfit.
PAD
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He started gyrating while singing a Spice Girls number which Simon mercifully cut short after less than two bars.
In the I-can’t-believe-I-know-this file, I think the song that guy started in on was a Pussycat Dolls tune, not a Spice Girls one…
And if you think American Idol has been giving fandom a hard time so far, next week they’re showing their San Diego auditions. Since AI was, IIRC, in San Diego around the same time as the Comic Con, I’d bet there’ll be a few interestingly costumed folks recruited from the con for wacky audtioning hijinks…
American Idol becoming such a huge phenom is the worst thing to ever happen to the audition shows. Instead of hapless folks who have fooled themselves into thinking they can sing, we’re now inundated with attention-seeking psycho after costumed psycho who are only there to act weird enough to get onto TV. I suppose with the Gong Show and Jerry Springer no longer in production, this is all they’ve got…
Whenever the mention of Star Wars fans come up, I can’t help but think of this classic bit from Conan O’Brien.
I generally don’t watch the audition shows of AI just because I’m uncomfortable when people embarrass (intentionally or not) themselves.
I’ve no sympathy at all, though, for those there to make a “splash” with costumes or singing creepy songs to Paula.
I wonder how many of these “splashy” folks were inspired by the odd success of William Hung.
I’m still amazed that people actually find this show entertaining. It’s as entertaining as watching a train crash into an SUV.
“It’s as entertaining as watching a train crash into an SUV.”
I’d watch that show.
Didn’t know WHAT to expect, but after the first sentence I had this image of someone singing the Star Wars theme lyrics.
Would that it’d been that lame.
I’m surprised AI is still on the air, let alone popular. I can only attribute it to the train-wreck factor.
“First there was a guy who showed up in–swear to God–Princess Leia’s slave outfit.”
Whoa. Check, please.
Whoa. Check, please.
You’re not kidding. When he walked away from camera, they slapped an “American Idol” logo over his backside in order to make the view acceptable to family viewing. Personally, I think they missed a bet. Instead of the AI logo in the circle, they should have had a clip of the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon where they’re saying, “That’s no moon! That’s a space station!”
PAD
I actually heard that someone in a costume made it thru this year – she dressed as a lobster and sang Under the Sea. In other words, used the gimmick to actually stand out and accentuate herself. Might be interesting to see how that audition goes.
I’m surprised AI is still on the air, let alone popular. I can only attribute it to the train-wreck factor.
**warning, academic alert**
It’s not really trainwreck syndrome – although that’s a lot of what drives people watching the audition shows. But what drives people to audition are two entirely separate things. One is the intentional point of AI, and latter is a cultural force issue.
Addressing the latter, AI has simply become a rite of passage. People go because their friends go, high school groups organize trips around audition season, people save up, strategize about the best audition locations, and go for the communal, social event and a swipe at 15 minutes. That encompasses most of the people who know they’re not good enough but try out anyhow.
The rest of the people are the ones who are deluded about how good they are, or those who can genuinely sing. And for these people, the motivation is the original pull of not just AI, but non-exploitive reality shows in general (with the fuzzy line on exploitation being drawn at roughly how actual show contestants are treated – whether you like reality television or not, you’ve to agree there is a difference in the way the American Idol contestants are treated from the, say, Rock of Love girls).
Reality TV constructs desire; desire is constructed via fantasy (your impossible relation to the desire). What better way that to visualize your fantasies than see them played out on television? Reality TV is the visual playground of the American Dream, of being able to stand out from the herd and make it – whether you define making it as being rewarded by a record contract, dancing, or marrying into wealth (or whatever else). This is why we see the audition process, why we get backstory, and why producers try to make the contestants as normal as possible – the American public has to identify with them as being “just like me”. If the public can’t relate, the public won’t think that it could be them in that place.
There’s also participation. Most RTV breaks the 4th wall and not only addresses the viewer at home, but invites them to participate actively in the process of creating the show, from being on the show to determining the show outcome. Reality television thus begins to create itself: the person on the television realizing their desire fuels the fantasy of the viewer, who is then inspired to achieve their desire via reality television, which fuels more fantasies, and so on.
You can also go into time and reality TV, and how it separates itself from fictional TV time and instead has shared time with the viewer; it’s another form of participation. Time also brings us the promise that there will never be another programme exactly like the preceding; the show is a snapshot representing the world in that single instance, and because of its unscripted nature cannot ever occur in exactly the same manner again. This is why it becomes important to watch every episode of a show; because they are each different, fundamentally unpredictable, and will never occur in exactly the same manner again.
We watch these shows because they visualize our fantasies and validate desire. Reality television thus begins to create itself: the person on the television who is realizing their desire fuels the fantasy of the viewer, who tries out for (and sometimes appears on) reality television, which fuels more fantasies, and so on. And because reality television is a slice of life of an actual person whose story begins before the show and will continue after it, as opposed to a scripted character, it is real; it has time, and time moves.
….in my defense, I have bad lungs, which occasionally land me on bedrest for weeks (or in the case of when I began watching reality television, months). I had to do something to stay engaged with my academics while bored out of my mind. 😉
http://xkcd.com/307/
(Be sure to mouse over the strip for the alt text!)
LOL.
Quoth PAD:
“That’s no moon! That’s a space station!”
That, or “I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They’re not much bigger than two meters.”
“I’m surprised AI is still on the air, let alone popular. I can only attribute it to the train-wreck factor.”
Or maybe it’s because it’s a hugely entertaining show (even for someone like me, who hates most pop music) that turns unknowns into genuine pop stars and has more of a cultural impact than any other TV show. There is no train wreck factor, because there is no train wreck (other than the auditions in the beginning, but they are not why people watch the show).
I only watch the first 2-3 weeks of Idol durring the auditions. That stuff is comedy gold – funniest thing on TV. When it becomes an actual competition to make a prefab pop star, who cares, but seeing people bomb out and sing badly is awesome. The editing is very funny, too, when they make compilation songs of all the bad singers.
However, I didn’t see episode 1, but I saw episode 2 last night and I thought it was really funny. The last guy they had on was amazing – he was dressed like a pimp from the future. And his song was great! “I am your brother! Together until the end of time!!” It was catchy and surpsingly uplifting in a tone-deaf sort of way. That song needs to be actually released.
Here it is, “You Are my Brother”. If anyone missed I thought this was genuinely amazing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAP3ZdXeWAk
Surprisingly happy moment too, when the show can get really dark with all the people having their hopes and dreams crushed every five minutes.
And here it is on Youtube. Sorta.
Wow. Thanks for pointing that out, Peter. Though actually he wasn’t as hairy as I was expecting.
And here’s the Leia buns chick. I couldn’t even get through that one.
Sean, you mean this?
*ka-wince*
Geekdom gains and loses ground pretty dámņ fast, on reality TV…
*ka-wince*
Geekdom gains and loses ground pretty dámņ fast, on reality TV…
*ka-wince*
Geekdom gains and loses ground pretty dámņ fast, on reality TV…
*ka-wince*
Geekdom gains and loses ground pretty dámņ fast, on reality TV…
*ka-wince*
Geekdom gains and loses ground pretty dámņ fast, on reality TV…
Yeah, when she came out and started going off on her tirade, within about the first sentence I’d said, “Oh, so she just dressed up like that so she could use it as an excuse when she got tossed.” Plus I thought it looked pretty obvious, with all that stuff about “Why do I have the urge to give the finger to the camera right now? Why do I have the urge to give the finger to the camera right now?” that for her it was more about giving a performance at that point than it was about her being sincere in anything she said.
Thank goodness I don’t waste my life watching that swill…
Well, fandom does tend to attract the socially awkward and inept, but mostly because fandom is totally inclusive. There’s no barrier to entry in fandom, except that you like something.
I don’t think fandom should be judged for having a few crazies in it. That’s like judging all Americans based on the people who appear on the Jerry Springer show.
Well, I’m sure this is the ONLY time Star Wars fans have done something embarrassing and ridiculous. Thanks for the American Idol update, PAD, but I’ll stick to the Star Wars Kid.
“Didn’t know WHAT to expect, but after the first sentence I had this image of someone singing the Star Wars theme lyrics.”
The irony is Princess Leia did exactly that at the end of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
No, I’m not kidding.
Yeah, we know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYQVyVyeWho
And you could hardly tell that she was coked outs her mind. Well, that’s a lie. You could tell.
Lucas has said in several interviews that, if he could, he would hunt down every single copy of that thing and destroy them with an axe. Still, the Fett cartoon wasn’t as bad as the rest of the thing.
Would American Idol be a hit if they skipped the early auditions with all the freaks and just started in Hollywood?
And you could hardly tell that she was coked outs her mind. Well, that’s a lie. You could tell.
Well, you’re the cop sp I’ll defer to your superior knowledge on this but to me she’s acting like someone slipped her a roofie. And watching it has made me want to shoot up with smack and die like a dog in the streets.
I couldn’t see anything in that clip that made it clear she was coked up.
Well, at least we Star Wars geeks have our copies of Family Guy:
Blue Harvest on DVD to be entertained by…
Ok, I should have said “stoned out of her mind” rather then coke out of her mind. Either way, she was a wee bit goofy in every scene in that thing. Still, the real question is:
What was Lucas on when he thought that this, and especially the part with Bee singing in the end, was a good idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVbCS8vg8m0&feature=related
Ok, I should have said “stoned out of her mind” rather then coke out of her mind. Either way, she was a wee bit goofy in every scene in that thing. Still, the real question is:
What was Lucas on when he thought that this, and especially the part with Bee singing in the end, was a good idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVbCS8vg8m0&feature=related
If you need something to take the view of the ugly Leia (Leio?) out of your head, the upcoming comedy FANBOYS — described on the IMDB as “Star Wars” fans travel to Skywalker Ranch to steal an early copy of “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” for their dying friend” — includes Kristen Bell dressed in the slave girl Leia outfit. Mmmmmm.
As for geeks, they/we need to recognize that there are limits to what we should do. First, people with certain body types should not try certain costumes — as the heavyset guy in the cartoon FULL FRONTAL NERDITY said, “Some of us are meant to always be Klingons” — and going transgender and revealing can be pretty dangerous. Second, there is a time and a place for certain outfits (Jim typed, flashing back to the juror dismissed for trying to attend the trial in a TREK uniform) and a time to leave them at home. Sadly, the early episodes of AMERICAN IDOL are the perfect time to try something like this: While there are a few (at least semi) talented folks picked to go on, the early eps delight in the freaks and truly awful (remember William Hung? Sorry if you do) to be mocked by Simon and laughed at by the viewers at home. However, like many of the ridiculous people featured on THE DAILY SHOW (though not until the strike ends and they can use “the” again) they most likely realize that they look or sound ridiculous but know this is the only way they’ll get any sort of publciity. I doubt Leio seriously believed he’d make it to the final rounds.
As for the show AMERICAN IDOL, someone very wise said you can’t create art by committee, and that’s what AI does (if you equate “record sales” with “Art”).
Oh,PAD, You’re an “American Idol” fan?–
(Shakes head and puts “Fallen Angel” #23 back on the shelf.)
PS. (Just kidding, Bought and Loved FA #23)
If some guys want to dress up in horrific Star Wars costumes, let them. They’ll always be balanced out by the sports fans who take their shirts off and paint their entire bodies in the team colors.
Thank god I have never watched this show.
Unfortunately, it is thrown in our faces by promos all over the Internet and Magazines so you can’t escape it.
I was sorry I had the Fox network on last night when a promo for this came up.
Paint drying is more intellectual watching than this claptrap.
Thank god I have never watched this show.
It’s worth watching once they get to the smaller groups (about 6 or 7) left. Usually the lesser talents are eliminated at that point.
However, if you like country music Nashville Star on the USA Network usually has a higher quality of talent from the get-go. Not sure why, but it’s true. I’ve actually sought out the CDs of several of their contestants.
“watching than this claptrap.”
This sort of brings up an interesting idea. For a show looking to find someone who can sing well, usually an auditory experience, there’s an awful lot of visual presentation. But, I suppose Video really did kill the Radio Star.
Call me cruel, but I’m kinda glad that the show is being flooded with attention seekers instead of people who actually think they have talent.
The entire purpose of these first few episodes is to see Simon eat someone’s soul (even if they are really trying hard, and have a moderate voice). I’ve only watched 2 or 3 episodes in the entire run, and he was just needlessly cruel to people who really didn’t deserve it.
According to Keith Olberman, ratings are down 11 percent or so, so maybe this season is the well deserved final one (and we can get back to shows with actual stories [after the strike that is; I want my Heroes! ^_^]
If I have to watch and unscripted show. It will be Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, or one of the “real’ game shows like Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader” or “Jeopardy”.
Better yet that’s when I turn off the TV and read a book. (Been doing that more and more lately and that’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened)
“Ok, I should have said “stoned out of her mind” rather then coke out of her mind.”
No, Coked is the correct verb. Knowing her history, it’s obvious (she’s said in interviews having no recollection of doing the show).
As it happens, I was watching the Holiday Special just last night. Rifftrax has done a commentary for it….super dámņ funny. (and unlike many, I enjoy the Holiday special for it’s campy fun).
As for AI vs Nashville Star…Nashville Star is such a smaller scale, it has less of a …talent…pool to draw on, so it has less chaff to get rid of in the beginning. It also has less hours to fill than AI.
And why’s it still on the air? Because people enjoy watch folks go for the dreams? Because you never know if you’re gonna see the next Oscar winning Jenifer Hudson, Grammy Winning Kelly Clarkson, or everything winning Carrie Underwood.
Nobody: and like washername, the DJ Olbermann talks to about AI, it being down 11% is like a billionaire losing a thousand dollars. It still trumps other shows in the ratings.
And it’s not AI that’s keeping scripted shows off. Fox uses AI to help it’s scripted shows like House and Bones become hits. It’s crap written scripted shows that keep scripted shows off. For every Heroes, there are 4 Bionic Woman’s and Journeymen looking to copy the themes to turn folks off. For that matter, it wasn’t AI that made Heroes’ 2nd season rather lackluster.
“it being down 11% is like a billionaire losing a thousand dollars. It still trumps other shows in the ratings.”
What? No. Going down 11% is like a billionaire losing 100 million dollars. Anyone who’s net worth is 1 billion will panic if he suddenly loses 100 million. Any show that loses 11% of its ratings over last season is having troubles. That’s not an insignificant amount.
AI does well, but 11% is a pretty big drop. Maybe not enough to kill it this season, but enough that start making the network nervous. Every show runs out of steam eventually.
“For every Heroes, there are 4 Bionic Woman’s and Journeymen looking to copy the themes to turn folks off.”
Whoa, there. Journeyman was A. nothing like Heroes, and B. infinitely better written and more intelligent than the inane Heroes.
And as for AI, I kind of wish people who have never seen it, or only seen a couple episodes of the auditions, would stop groundlessly attacking it. It’s a good show. Get your noses out of the air and open your minds a bit.
“Whoa, there. Journeyman was A. nothing like Heroes, and B. infinitely better written and more intelligent than the inane Heroes.
And as for AI, I kind of wish people who have never seen it, or only seen a couple episodes of the auditions, would stop groundlessly attacking it. It’s a good show. Get your noses out of the air and open your minds a bit.”
You know, your pleas for people to not attack a show you like would come across much better if you didn’t attack other shows in the same breath.
Also, denigrating people who disagree with you? Not a great tactic for winning hearts and minds either….
Food for thought.
I can attack Heroes because I’ve seen the entire first season. My only complaint was people who were denigrating AI while admitting they’d never actually watched it.