Up until last night, I had never seen an episode of American Idol. That’s not because I’m some fussy elitist, mind you— I’ve watched more episodes of The Single Guy and Suddenly Susan than I care to admit. It’s just that I never got around to catching up on the show’s first few seasons, and at some point that failure became something of a badge of honor, on par with my accomplishment of not throwing up for 14 straight years (a streak terminated, sadly, by an ill-fated tub of KFC mashed potatoes a few years back). Anyway, a fluke series of events finally made me cave to inevitability, and last night I finally succumbed, sitting through the finale of America’s most popular show. I’m glad I did.
I suppose I should start off by saying I didn't enter into this arrangement totally ignorant of American Idol’s workings. Thanks to Ken Levine and Alan Sepinwall, I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s been going on this season, whether it was the ill-timed apotheosis of little David Archuleta, Paula’s drunken soothsaying, or the inescapable sense of a formula starting to fray at the edges. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how irritating that formula could be. In particle physics, there’s something called the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which essentially states that if you affect one particle in a certain way, its partner will be affected inversely. Watching the show unfold, it was hard not to think back to that dynamic, because every time something cool and exciting happened, it was almost immediately undermined by something equally odious.
Take Graham Nash. He’s a great performer, a living legend, and perhaps most relevantly, one of the few artists from the 60s who has consistently managed to not become a total parody of himself. I was really excited when he came out on stage, in other words. But his duet with Brooke was such shameless pandering (and so devoid of harmony) that it made me reconsider my previous assessment of Nash and his accomplishments, to the point that when I was re-listening to Déjà Vu after the show, I couldn’t stop thinking about that desultory duet. Has American Idol ruined CSNY for me? God, I hope not.
There were quite a few other good/bad moments, like eventual winner David Cook’s bliss with ZZ Top being followed by the unforgivably talentless Jonas Brothers (or, Hansen without the guilty pleasure of "MMMBop", which, come to think of it, wasn't even that pleasurable). But through all that, I remained mesmerized. To the extent that there’s anything culturally redeeming about American Idol, it’s probably how unabashedly American it really is: outrageous spectacle, style trumping talent, rabid commercialism at its most unforgiving. It's a force of nature, propelling an everyman into an international superstar, while simultaneously able to destroy my confidence in what I once cherished. Here’s a show that embodies, rather perfectly, the very ethos of this blog's spiritual namesake, bashing its viewers into perfect submission with the greatest of ease.
I can't wait for next year.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
America's Neon Hustle
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Patriot's Draft
The Writers Guild versus the AMPTP might soon measure amongst the most significant events of our recent national public-political discourse. Stateside opinion of this president’s agenda has descended into an absurd nonsensicality, an afterthought inherent to an administration crippled by its overseas endeavors. Our recent presidential campaigns have been muted by permeating senses of foregone conclusions, both bleakly desperate (2004) and cautiously promising (2008.) And by now the once vaunted “New” Congress has proved infinitely more interested in on occupying itself with the affairs d’Clemens and Belichick than seizing upon any major policy movements. Meanwhile, a major labor dispute has now come and not really gone, helping to define in no small way the terms of a major domestic industry’s growth for the immediate hereafter with few Americans knowing (caring?) about the matters at stake, not only as relate to professional writers, but our own very lifestyles.
The terms of the writers’ return remain undisclosed to the public, but it is probable that the writers will receive a royalty rate lower than the proposed reparations for DVD sales would have provided once the agreement is ratified, as well as royalties for new media still well-below the desired broadcast television standard. Though, thankfully, nobody will be losing their homes or starving in Los Feliz in the immediate future for this agreement, there remains no end to the dirty tricks at the disposal of our multinational overlords to squeeze entertainment workers for every last penny. Online media- on the back of content bereft of the costs of manufacturing, shipping, storing and retailing physical properties- may very well yield profits soon into the billions. And as other proposals that might limit the continued dominance of corporate media powers seem doomed to fail, an eventual revelation of the strike’s resolution turning out to be the “Home Video Swindle: Redux” seems not only plausible, but exceedingly likely. Come the maturity of an integrated, online age for all popular entertainment, we will see more and more importance implicit to such issues as those highlighted in the recent strike. Yes, our scripted television shows are coming back on the air, but for thousands of people who work in the industry bracing for the possibility of more upheaval, their livelihoods are very much still up in it. A settlement shouldn’t suggest anything has truly been settled.
HBO’s John Adams miniseries wrapped up its 7 episode Emmy-grab this past Sunday night. I share many of the criticisms of the series that have been commonly reported in critics’ circles. The performances throughout are consistently decent yet somehow disappointing, many episodes are given to interminably boring stretches devoid of any sense of historian David McCullough’s transcendent passion for its source material, and that this gritty age of telefilms’ insistence on realism has culminated in a most brutal extreme, seemingly independent of any storytelling purpose. Yet it still evident to me that Adams is possessed of at least one strength which elevates it from utter mediocrity: John Adams was a simply brilliant mind and a dynamic speaker in heated debate, whose talents here lead to several excellent scenes depicting the political contests of our nation’s birth and early years. Paul Giamatti, in the series titular role, plays his finest moments with a dour ferocity of belief in the import his duties, which take him from the courtrooms of colonial Boston to the hostile would-be architects of America at Independence Hall and even an Audience with King Crankypants the Second himself.
miting in their depictions of Adams as a person. We endure lengthy treatments on his restless periods in Europe (the French here are hedonist airheads, the Dutch wry moneychangers) and infrequent interaction with his family that mostly settles for presenting the man in the simple dyad of sensitive husband, overbearing-yet-distant father. But more than anything, his endless frustration permeates our every sense of the man. While often depicted fretting that he may not have done enough to secure a future for his fledgling country, certainly seems convinced enough of his accomplishments as a legislator and diplomat to brood endlessly over his recognized place in history for them. Adams was all-too aware it seems, even in his own time, that he was destined to the second-tier of our historical remembrance, behind men more popular (Thomas Jefferson), weighty (George Washington) or merely adept at whoring for attention (Benjamin Franklin.) To this day the greatest tribute paid to him is a 752 page biography that most Americans will never so much as use to level a coffee table (and now, 8 or so more hours of HBO’s post-Sopranos programming.)
Our neglect for the contentious farmer’s son from Massachusetts parallels our current role as consumers regarding the status of entertainment workers. Mixed thoughts and opinions converge for me as I experience a viewing of HBO’s John Adams miniseries via a less-than-legal internet source. Tuning into Hulu, with its high quality streams and conveniently stable servers has taken on something of a conflicting feel for me. It is a fact that our continued support for online content has enabled the technology that makes it so much clearer, faster and more plentiful and profitable) than ever, yet this is also maybe the single largest source of the leverage used by corporate powers to shirk fairness and continue to dominate its own, largely anonymous workmen’s class.
John Adams, the series, asks us to glorify the most unlikely qualities of likability that define our uniquely American spirit, and to elevate the collective effort of those who raised our nation by celebrating the most relatively nondescript of our sacred statesman. Adams, the man, lost his place on Mount Rushmore not for undeserving, but as the cost of his inability to be both indispensible and beloved at the same time. Tuning into Big-Money outlets like Hulu for our 30 Rock fix now feels, in some small way, complicit with a similar kind of marginalization to that which Adams has endured in our collective consciousness. It is after all our demand for new media that has pit another great American institution- Labor- against the times.
Or am I just framing a self-serving argument for the torrent abuser in all of us? Are we privateers or pirates? I’m really not sure, though I think I can say that, today, being a buccaneer bootlegger has never quite felt so patriotic.
