HILARIOUS "American Idol" article/review (a must read for any viewer)
08-22-02, 04:16 PM
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HILARIOUS "American Idol" article/review (a must read for any viewer)
Just found this HILARIOUS article/review on WashingtonPost.com from the always scathing Tom Shales (dated 7/30). Enjoy! I did. Even piss'd my pants.
'American Idol': Fool's Gold From Fox
By Tom Shales
Tuesday, July 30, 2002; Page C01
Who says there are no new ideas? Each week, often twice, the Fox network airs its latest innovation: A talent show with no talent. Or at best, precious little. But people who tune in to "American Idol" may not be watching it for the alleged talent on display but rather to enjoy another exercise in Humiliation Television.
It's also roadkill TV -- a gruesome spectacle that you can't help slowing down to stare at. Most of the contestants -- ages 16 through 24 -- will need lots of work merely to rise to the level of mediocrity, still more to graduate to competence. Several would require an outright talent transplant. But none appears to lack self-confidence, and fecklessly sappy hosts Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman smother them with praise for having the guts to make love to themselves in public. Seated among the contestants on a recent show, Clunky Dunky declared fatuously, "There's a lot of love in this room." The contestants all clapped and cheered.
The show -- whose latest episode airs tonight at 9 on Channel 5 -- is a whomping big success, partly because there's little else on that's new, partly because it gives us folks at home a chance to see people embarrassed, and partly because it's one of those merrily terrible things that Fox does so well.
Subtitled "The Search for a Superstar" -- though it is unlikely one will actually emerge -- "Idol" obviously follows in the footsteps of "Star Search," "Showtime at the Apollo" and, for those who have been with TV almost since the beginning, "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." There are also elements of "The Gong Show" and MTV's monumentally insufferable "Real World," and like so much American TV, this show is based on a British original ("Pop Idol").
Fox executives knew the show needed "edge," that most valued of modern entertainment commodities, so they tossed in a spleeny meanie to liven it up. That would be Simon Cowell, one of three judges and the only one who'll dare to tell someone, as he did last week, that they've been "absolutely dreadful."
The other two judges, plump music executive Randy Jackson and dancer Paula Abdul, tend to be mealy-mouthed goody-goodies, though on a recent show, after Jackson had a near-violent tantrum over Cowell's alleged cruelty to contestants, Jackson told one young hopeful, "I thought [that] was really, really bad, actually." Jackson thought it outrageous that the snitty Brit referred to the losers as "losers" and had barked, "This is America. . . . We don't insult people." We don't? When did the rules change?
Tension between Abdul and Cowell may be one of the show's strongest selling points, even if it did take the producers somewhat by surprise. Abdul gets in plenty of personal cheap shots herself. On one show she mockingly hugged Cowell and said, "He wasn't held much when he was a child." Last week she said of him, "This is what happens when you're breast-fed by your father." Naturally the crowd whoops it up whenever she lobs in one of these zingers.
As someone who says she likes to "look at the glass half-full," Abdul oozes insipid encouragement even to the least impressive contestants, usually rewarding them with "good job," "real good job" or "great job." She thinks it takes courage just to get up there and sing in front of a national audience. It does, but it also takes an ego as big as Mount Baldy.
On last week's two shows, one of the remaining eight contestants had to be eliminated on the basis of another performance and a viewer phone-in poll that supposedly drew more than 8 million calls. Flunking out was A.J. Gil, a soft-spoken teenage boy with a pitifully frail voice but the smarts to use "The Star-Spangled Banner" as his first number on the premiere.
He was sent home with tears and cheers (the "Idol" studio audience would cheer for lint) and with counsel from Cowell to "get better." Abdul told Gil that poor Cowell "will never know the highs that you've experienced performing in front of all these people. . . . The only high he'll ever experience is if he smokes his own T-shirt." Somebody's helping Abdul with her Ab-libs.
By this time, all the finalists have fan clubs consisting mainly of screaming teenage girls -- the new custodians of American popular culture, in case you've been wondering where it went. In addition, contestants with weak voices now get the benefit of unseen backup singers and full, prerecorded orchestral arrangements, whereas on earlier shows they sang with just piano accompaniment. The background singers and band often carry the melody line in case the contestant loses track of it.
To judge from the way most of the contestants are dressed, coiffed and, yes, pierced, this is more freak show than talent show. The competition seems to depend on looks and attitude. As Lisa de Moraes wrote recently in these pages, "Idol" is searching not for singers with golden voices but for those boasting "washboard stomachs, tiny heinies, cleavage, chiseled faces and dancing ability."
The cleavage isn't where one might assume it to be. Most of the female contestants have not plunging necklines but plunging waistlines; they are determined we see their navels and perhaps the tattoos beneath them, and as much skin between hips and breasts as the law will allow. The most blatant offender and one of the least auspicious contestants is the fire-breathing Ryan Starr, who looks like she eats live mice for breakfast. She does have determination, though -- determination befitting a fascist dictator.
Last week she made a spectacle of herself singing "You Really Got Me," a rock oldie originally recorded by the Kinks. The song really requires a group delivery, with lots of rock wattage to compensate for its insanely repetitious lyrics ("You really got me, you really got me, you really got me"). Starr had to change "Girl, you really got me goin' " to "Boy" at the opening, of course. The performance was compellingly pathetic. Even Abdul found it a bit less than superb.
One thing the show unwittingly demonstrates is how little it now takes to be passed off as a pop singer, and how low what was once an art form has sunk. Appearance not only counts, it counts for everything. Virtually all the finalists are POW-thin, with pencil legs and pipe-cleaner arms. It's creepy. Gore Vidal once said, "Having no talent is no longer enough." Having no flesh on your bones is also a requirement.
With his fluffy round puff of frizz topping a spindly stick-figure body, the alarmingly androgynous Justin Guarini -- currently the favorite to win the whole shebang -- looks like a dandelion being electrocuted. And can he sing?! Well, no. But almost. And he sucks up shamelessly to the crowd, a bad habit shared by some of his competitors.
He turns on the cutes with insidious cunning, and the girls, of course, scream on cue. If a real singer walked into the studio and sang a real song, it would be surreal, bizarre. It would be a "Twilight Zone" episode. If the great Nat King Cole came back to life and sang "Stardust," the audience would boo him off the stage before he could even get out "And now the purple dusk of twilight time / Steals across the meadows of my heart."
A couple of the surviving contestants do show ability and true appeal. Christina Christian has an infectious personality and a fine voice. The same goes for Kelly Clarkson, probably the best singer in the group and the least exhibitionistic. It was cute to see her trilling "Natural Woman" dressed in slacks, necktie and homburg.
Meanwhile the producers would have us believe all these contestants love one another very much and wish one another success. If true, they are bucking one of the oldest show-business traditions of all: To thine own self be devoted.
The program has reality-show elements in that we are treated to taped footage of the kids living together in the same big rented mansion.
Last week they all went to work building a house for the Habitat for Humanity project. If they build as well as they sing, the house will be condemned as unsafe before anyone has a chance to move in.
No more does the purple dusk of twilight time steal across the meadows of our hearts. "American Idol" is indeed good for a giggle, but it's a cause for lament, too -- style being passed off as substance again, attitude being substituted for ability, a perverse twisting of democratic ideals to encompass the notion that even the manifestly untalented deserve a spotlight, an audience and a cheering section of their own.
Real American singers of true American songs wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this, and dead is unfortunately what many of them are.
Though I dream in vain
In my heart, it will remain:
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain.
'American Idol': Fool's Gold From Fox
By Tom Shales
Tuesday, July 30, 2002; Page C01
Who says there are no new ideas? Each week, often twice, the Fox network airs its latest innovation: A talent show with no talent. Or at best, precious little. But people who tune in to "American Idol" may not be watching it for the alleged talent on display but rather to enjoy another exercise in Humiliation Television.
It's also roadkill TV -- a gruesome spectacle that you can't help slowing down to stare at. Most of the contestants -- ages 16 through 24 -- will need lots of work merely to rise to the level of mediocrity, still more to graduate to competence. Several would require an outright talent transplant. But none appears to lack self-confidence, and fecklessly sappy hosts Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman smother them with praise for having the guts to make love to themselves in public. Seated among the contestants on a recent show, Clunky Dunky declared fatuously, "There's a lot of love in this room." The contestants all clapped and cheered.
The show -- whose latest episode airs tonight at 9 on Channel 5 -- is a whomping big success, partly because there's little else on that's new, partly because it gives us folks at home a chance to see people embarrassed, and partly because it's one of those merrily terrible things that Fox does so well.
Subtitled "The Search for a Superstar" -- though it is unlikely one will actually emerge -- "Idol" obviously follows in the footsteps of "Star Search," "Showtime at the Apollo" and, for those who have been with TV almost since the beginning, "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." There are also elements of "The Gong Show" and MTV's monumentally insufferable "Real World," and like so much American TV, this show is based on a British original ("Pop Idol").
Fox executives knew the show needed "edge," that most valued of modern entertainment commodities, so they tossed in a spleeny meanie to liven it up. That would be Simon Cowell, one of three judges and the only one who'll dare to tell someone, as he did last week, that they've been "absolutely dreadful."
The other two judges, plump music executive Randy Jackson and dancer Paula Abdul, tend to be mealy-mouthed goody-goodies, though on a recent show, after Jackson had a near-violent tantrum over Cowell's alleged cruelty to contestants, Jackson told one young hopeful, "I thought [that] was really, really bad, actually." Jackson thought it outrageous that the snitty Brit referred to the losers as "losers" and had barked, "This is America. . . . We don't insult people." We don't? When did the rules change?
Tension between Abdul and Cowell may be one of the show's strongest selling points, even if it did take the producers somewhat by surprise. Abdul gets in plenty of personal cheap shots herself. On one show she mockingly hugged Cowell and said, "He wasn't held much when he was a child." Last week she said of him, "This is what happens when you're breast-fed by your father." Naturally the crowd whoops it up whenever she lobs in one of these zingers.
As someone who says she likes to "look at the glass half-full," Abdul oozes insipid encouragement even to the least impressive contestants, usually rewarding them with "good job," "real good job" or "great job." She thinks it takes courage just to get up there and sing in front of a national audience. It does, but it also takes an ego as big as Mount Baldy.
On last week's two shows, one of the remaining eight contestants had to be eliminated on the basis of another performance and a viewer phone-in poll that supposedly drew more than 8 million calls. Flunking out was A.J. Gil, a soft-spoken teenage boy with a pitifully frail voice but the smarts to use "The Star-Spangled Banner" as his first number on the premiere.
He was sent home with tears and cheers (the "Idol" studio audience would cheer for lint) and with counsel from Cowell to "get better." Abdul told Gil that poor Cowell "will never know the highs that you've experienced performing in front of all these people. . . . The only high he'll ever experience is if he smokes his own T-shirt." Somebody's helping Abdul with her Ab-libs.
By this time, all the finalists have fan clubs consisting mainly of screaming teenage girls -- the new custodians of American popular culture, in case you've been wondering where it went. In addition, contestants with weak voices now get the benefit of unseen backup singers and full, prerecorded orchestral arrangements, whereas on earlier shows they sang with just piano accompaniment. The background singers and band often carry the melody line in case the contestant loses track of it.
To judge from the way most of the contestants are dressed, coiffed and, yes, pierced, this is more freak show than talent show. The competition seems to depend on looks and attitude. As Lisa de Moraes wrote recently in these pages, "Idol" is searching not for singers with golden voices but for those boasting "washboard stomachs, tiny heinies, cleavage, chiseled faces and dancing ability."
The cleavage isn't where one might assume it to be. Most of the female contestants have not plunging necklines but plunging waistlines; they are determined we see their navels and perhaps the tattoos beneath them, and as much skin between hips and breasts as the law will allow. The most blatant offender and one of the least auspicious contestants is the fire-breathing Ryan Starr, who looks like she eats live mice for breakfast. She does have determination, though -- determination befitting a fascist dictator.
Last week she made a spectacle of herself singing "You Really Got Me," a rock oldie originally recorded by the Kinks. The song really requires a group delivery, with lots of rock wattage to compensate for its insanely repetitious lyrics ("You really got me, you really got me, you really got me"). Starr had to change "Girl, you really got me goin' " to "Boy" at the opening, of course. The performance was compellingly pathetic. Even Abdul found it a bit less than superb.
One thing the show unwittingly demonstrates is how little it now takes to be passed off as a pop singer, and how low what was once an art form has sunk. Appearance not only counts, it counts for everything. Virtually all the finalists are POW-thin, with pencil legs and pipe-cleaner arms. It's creepy. Gore Vidal once said, "Having no talent is no longer enough." Having no flesh on your bones is also a requirement.
With his fluffy round puff of frizz topping a spindly stick-figure body, the alarmingly androgynous Justin Guarini -- currently the favorite to win the whole shebang -- looks like a dandelion being electrocuted. And can he sing?! Well, no. But almost. And he sucks up shamelessly to the crowd, a bad habit shared by some of his competitors.
He turns on the cutes with insidious cunning, and the girls, of course, scream on cue. If a real singer walked into the studio and sang a real song, it would be surreal, bizarre. It would be a "Twilight Zone" episode. If the great Nat King Cole came back to life and sang "Stardust," the audience would boo him off the stage before he could even get out "And now the purple dusk of twilight time / Steals across the meadows of my heart."
A couple of the surviving contestants do show ability and true appeal. Christina Christian has an infectious personality and a fine voice. The same goes for Kelly Clarkson, probably the best singer in the group and the least exhibitionistic. It was cute to see her trilling "Natural Woman" dressed in slacks, necktie and homburg.
Meanwhile the producers would have us believe all these contestants love one another very much and wish one another success. If true, they are bucking one of the oldest show-business traditions of all: To thine own self be devoted.
The program has reality-show elements in that we are treated to taped footage of the kids living together in the same big rented mansion.
Last week they all went to work building a house for the Habitat for Humanity project. If they build as well as they sing, the house will be condemned as unsafe before anyone has a chance to move in.
No more does the purple dusk of twilight time steal across the meadows of our hearts. "American Idol" is indeed good for a giggle, but it's a cause for lament, too -- style being passed off as substance again, attitude being substituted for ability, a perverse twisting of democratic ideals to encompass the notion that even the manifestly untalented deserve a spotlight, an audience and a cheering section of their own.
Real American singers of true American songs wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this, and dead is unfortunately what many of them are.
Though I dream in vain
In my heart, it will remain:
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain.
08-23-02, 06:43 AM
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Re: HILARIOUS "American Idol" article/review (a must read for any viewer)
'American Idol': Fool's Gold From Fox
By Tom Shales
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Justin Guarini looks like a dandelion being electrocuted.
By Tom Shales
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Justin Guarini looks like a dandelion being electrocuted.
08-23-02, 08:20 AM
#4
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Originally posted by pawdog
Sorry, but the show is not good enough to read such a long review. This is one of those times I feel sorry for anyone that has to watch tv for a living.
Sorry, but the show is not good enough to read such a long review. This is one of those times I feel sorry for anyone that has to watch tv for a living.
08-23-02, 09:27 AM
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• Quoth Daytripper •<HR SIZE=1>Well paw, I'm sorry you feel this way. That article was mostly written for entertainment purposes. Your loss. <HR SIZE=1>
Yeah, go crap in someone else's thread.
Anyway, I read the article and wonder how much the author really watched the show. This comment made me laugh pretty hard:
The most blatant offender and one of the least auspicious contestants is the fire-breathing Ryan Starr, who looks like she eats live mice for breakfast.
Fox executives knew the show needed "edge," that most valued of modern entertainment commodities, so they tossed in a spleeny meanie to liven it up. That would be Simon Cowell
While it has some good zingers, this article misses one major factor that keeps people coming back to the show: some of these kids have some serious talent. I'll be the first to agree that the American television audience is stupid, but the show wouldn't be the runaway hit it's become without the talent.
das
08-23-02, 09:53 AM
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Originally posted by das Monkey
Yeah, go crap in someone else's thread.
Anyway, I read the article and wonder how much the author really watched the show. This comment made me laugh pretty hard:
This comment made me
Yeah, kudos to Fox for creating Simon Cowell.
While it has some good zingers, this article misses one major factor that keeps people coming back to the show: some of these kids have some serious talent. I'll be the first to agree that the American television audience is stupid, but the show wouldn't be the runaway hit it's become without the talent.
das
• Quoth Daytripper •<HR SIZE=1>Well paw, I'm sorry you feel this way. That article was mostly written for entertainment purposes. Your loss. <HR SIZE=1>
Yeah, go crap in someone else's thread.
Anyway, I read the article and wonder how much the author really watched the show. This comment made me laugh pretty hard:
This comment made me
Yeah, kudos to Fox for creating Simon Cowell.
While it has some good zingers, this article misses one major factor that keeps people coming back to the show: some of these kids have some serious talent. I'll be the first to agree that the American television audience is stupid, but the show wouldn't be the runaway hit it's become without the talent.
das
Das, are you familiar with Tom Shales? If not, he is a real jerk. Hates everything. For more of his "reviews", go check them out on WashingtonPost.com sometime. They're quite funny. However, he **LOVES** "Sex and the City" (go figure). His review for the show and this season was quite glowing. My jaw was open while I read that article. Also currently online if you have the time.
08-23-02, 10:00 AM
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• Quoth Daytripper •<HR SIZE=1>Das, are you familiar with Tom Shales? If not, he is a real jerk. Hates everything. For more of his "reviews", go check them out on WashingtonPost.com sometime. They're quite funny. However, he **LOVES** "Sex and the City" (go figure). His review for the show and this season was quite glowing. My jaw was open while I read that article. Also currently online if you have the time. <HR SIZE=1>
Yeah, I'm mildly familiar with him, though I steer clear of most TV reviewers, as I rarely get the feeling they watch more than one isolated episode of a given show before dismissing it as trash or proclaiming it to be genius.
Sadly, I'm without the time or I'd go read some of his stuff ... but I do appreciate you posting this article.
das
08-25-02, 08:25 AM
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"American Idol" is indeed good for a giggle, but it's a cause for lament, too -- style being passed off as substance again, attitude being substituted for ability, a perverse twisting of democratic ideals to encompass the notion that even the manifestly untalented deserve a spotlight, an audience and a cheering section of their own.
Our entertainment culture BITES right now (for the most part).
08-25-02, 09:26 AM
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Originally posted by Kudama
Regardless of whether or not Tom Shales hates "everything", I've seen part of this show (I also know the premise) and agree fully with this tidbit
Our entertainment culture BITES right now (for the most part).
Regardless of whether or not Tom Shales hates "everything", I've seen part of this show (I also know the premise) and agree fully with this tidbit
Our entertainment culture BITES right now (for the most part).
08-25-02, 07:48 PM
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Originally posted by Daytripper
I only pointed out that Mr. Shales hates everything because sometimes, also like das said, he will only watch one episode and draw his negative conclusion on just that one show.
I only pointed out that Mr. Shales hates everything because sometimes, also like das said, he will only watch one episode and draw his negative conclusion on just that one show.
That sort of sounds like me sometimes. I swear, I like some stuff.(I see your point. I tend to disregard a critic who can't accept at least some things as entertainment and dis everything that they don't consider "high art".)
I guess this show does see to it that (for a while) a number of people have employment. For that I praise it, otherwise...
