The flaw of Idols
Sure, I did a post a year ago about this, but I want to address it from a slightly more helpful angle, and express some more encouragement to anyone who might endure the experience, and state that the reasons for singing carry on quite joyously outside of television.
Talent shows such as American Idol and X-Factor are built on a flawed “winner-takes-all” premise, and inevitably this method frustrates viewers who end up confounded over the ‘winner’.
Both shows start out promising: searching in every burgh to find diamonds in the rough, and hopefully expose some nearly flawless gems. The audience connects with a certain, or several, singers, and begin to feel a personal investment to help these souls to succeed. Each show charades a type of nurturing for these talents, doing the most basic of mentoring, insofar as preparing each singer for the next broadcast. We’re treated, along with the talent, to the most basic tutelage, in a crash course of what should unfold over a decade of care and mentoring. In a more stable world, it’s understood that talent takes TIME to nurture (which record companies have forgotten how to do, or said that it’s not worth doing) and these shows make a career seem so much a overnight endeavor and in essence, ever so transient and disposable, and therefore, nearly worthless. Celebrity is currently understood as “for the very short tolerance of now”.
Are these singing competitions? Style competitions? Music style wars? Model auditions? Dancing competitions? Or all-around ‘entertainer’ competition? Neither show defines the goal. I think they both mumble something about being “modern”, “fresh”, “the latest thing” or “unique”, but after the judges push their preferences for weeks, they turn it over to the public, and it becomes a popularity circus, popularity meaning “what is the biggest viewing demographic?”, and maybe then the advertisers can decide how to style their commercials..?
Did the producers, or the audience, think we’d found a better way to find talented musicians? Was this supposedly the next logical step, since society mentally wrote off record companies and A&R systems? Perhaps the record companies had it coming; after decades of living sweet off of the talents of underpaid artists. Perhaps they had it coming after decades of getting worse at developing any talent at all..
So if it was theoretically a better way to find talent, I think that the TV production minds simply blew it by trying to hand it over to the audiences. In both shows, once the pool is whittled down to a dozen or so, they move the voting away from judges, and hand it to the viewing audience. And what’s so egregious about that? It’s the voting method: calling to cast a vote, as many times as you feel like it. A fan can call in 1000 times a night, if they feel like it, and this changes the rules: instead of staying a talent contest, it’s wholly a popularity contest.
So in this way, modern televised talent shows fall outside of any reputable talent or singing contest once you reach the final 10.
Talent is taken out of it once the only rule is, “how many times will a viewer dial a number in one night?”. Every year at this point my mind changes gears, and I’d like to look into the statistics of how crazy, competitive, obsessive, and aimless this makes the modern caller! What this says about modern society is much more interesting than amateurs who are painfully green to watch. I envision sane people calling in once or twice, and the crazy people dialing for three hours straight, just because the singer is cute, or has the right haircut, or etc, 100 things other than if they really sing better than contestant B. You also have to know that people are voting just to make sure contestant C doesn’t get anywhere (the jealousy technique)! Doesn’t that put you in mind of grade school drama, rather than a sensible way to pick a recording artist?
Year after year, my favorite singers on these shows, who seem to have the right balance of raw skill, individuality, potential, and a dash of star quality, are voted off while some one-trick-pony gets to first or second place, and I’m convinced that at this point it’s firmly in the popularity realm, no longer in the singing realm of reality.
Now I’m really tempted to say that I *know* that my choices are the most talented singers, with the most potential in the long run, etc, etc….. actually this much I’m sure of. I just don’t care to argue about it, so we won’t go there!
Those who win these shows fill a niche somewhere, so good luck to them. BUT those who make it to the top 6 ALL deserve to be there, if due to nothing else that they’re generally diverse at this point, and if commerce really must pay to keep the lights on and all that crap, let’s at least do the right thing.
Let’s just let the top 6 get contracts, and make a CD each. Compared with the lackluster crap that record companies dump on us through their normal methods, the least they could do is take a miniscule chance, especially since they’re the most likely beneficiaries of all this televised exposure.
Because although I’d have loved to have followed the “post-Hollywoood” careers of some of the 5th, 6th, or 7th-place finalists, they simply don’t receive any real exposure after they walk off the TV stage.
The show suffers for this “winner take all” mentality, and surely some record companies are losing out on some lire.
I think the producers adopted the winner takes all idea from sports, and our uber-competitive societies, which really love to bury the second-placers, rubbing some serious dirt during their stomp-down.
But you know, artistic endeavors really don’t need to stomp that down.
If I took you to an art museum, we’d each find six artists that we really would love to see again some day. We wouldn’t say, “Well I like Manet the best, so the rest can piss off and die, and I hope I never see any of them again! Losers!! Manet wiped the floor with the rest of those turds! Ha-Ha! Second place losers!” Nope, that’s certainly a sports-centric scenario.
So maybe this year I won’t watch either show. Or maybe I’ll take really good notes, and set off and follow singers who catch my attention, at my own pace and in due time, regardless of how this silly television circus spins. Once these shows get to the phone voting, I just get sick of the circus that’s coming, so why should I keep tuning into that train-wreck? Why be so sadistic, right? I can follow whomever I feel like, and not feel perplexed by the obsessive dialing mentality of whatever makes up the demographics of phone-obsessed America. I really don’t think I want to figure them out, because I’m quite sure they don’t know a promising singer from a cute face, especially if they’re full of the biases of 14-24 year olds. No offense, but someone born in 1995 doesn’t get how good Ella Fitzgerald is, even if she didn’t fit the mold of a TV star.
So I suppose, let the producers overstimulate the minds of their demographics, and may the commercials fit all the right notches so someone feels happy that all the top dollars are shifting hands.
I’ve got to try to recognize some good singers, if they even make it to this stage. I need to recognize that some years, there might not even be a valuable singer in the top 50, and learn when to stop watching!
And in the end, I believe that’s really all that an audition-er should really hope for: to have a chance to prove themselves, due to the visibility of the show. The rest is up to their true talent, from that day on. It’s just an opportunity, and a cheesy one at the worst of times. But if you’re really exceptional, getting passed by on a TV show is no reason at all to stop your progress. Actually, just add a TV theme show to your set, and sing twice as beautifully, in the quality tradition of those who earned their name for decades before TV became of any importance to anyone. If you’re really good, good fans will find you.
