Reality Check on American Idol

The first time I heard of him was about a week back, browsing through the Seattle Times in the coffee room after work. Another desi kid in the news in America, I thought. Well, at least it wasn’t the Spelling Bee, that king of useless American pursuits that children of Indian origin always seem to excel at.

No, this was American Idol, and the kid was Sanjaya Malakar, arguably the most despised 17 year old in the United States today. Among most people aged more than 13 at least. Defying all odds, as of today, he’s in the list of final nine contestants. There’s only one problem. He can’t sing.

And he’s as American as they come. But in keeping with our affinity for professing our kinship with any American celebrity with even a single desi gene (Sunita Williams, Bobby Jindal, Sanjay Gupta), Sanjaya is being touted by some in the media as somehow being an ‘Indian’ phenomenon.

And as if that was not bad enough, we also have conspiracy theories floating around the blogosphere attributing his continued presence on Idol to legions of Indian Call Center workers diligently sending in their telephonic votes for the singer, using their dedicated phone lines to the US, no less…!
It is probably futile to point out to these geniuses that 99.99 percent of Indians don’t even know what American Idol is, or that the show is broadcast a day late, on English languange pansy channel Star World, at an unearthly hour in the morning, and that generally speaking, a billion people on the other side of the planet aren’t exactly spending their waking hours thinking about a cheesy karaoke show on American prime time television. They’re probably busy with, oh I don’t know, getting a life?

Man I hate reality tv shows. At least the really tacky ones don’t pretend to be anything other than the skin-show-bitching-fests that they are. But well produced shows like American Idol (and its Indian spin-offs) keep up the pretense of being singing competitions while actually being all about image and cheap populism. On Indian television, even a once respected show like Sa-Re-Ga-Ma degenerated to Idol levels in 2005 with the advent of SMS voting for the contestants and the consequent regional parochialism. Of course, the channel (Zee, in this case) raked it in like never before with all the manufactured controversies and thinly-vieled bigotry on display.

Anway, apparently this guy Sanjaya can’t sing to save his life. Or so think the judges, and most viewers with an ear for music. Much has been made about his passing familiarity with scales, and with lyrics, and his big hair-dos and zillion-watt smile. When your hairstyle is more talked about than your vocal abilities, or lack of them, then maybe your musical career isn’t quite progressing on scripted lines. But then many of today’s made-to-order stars actually WANT it that way.

So how does an out-of-tune singer with a penchant for forgetting words to his songs still remain in the competition? After all, contestants are voted off the show every week – by viewers, calling in with their votes or sending in text messages. Therein lies the problem, because whether it’s the Lok Sabha, the Palestinian Territories, or American Idol, democracy has a way of throwing up unpalatable results. The culprits, in this case, seem to be legions of star-struck 13 year old girls mesmerized by toothy grins and gravity defying hair. And a website that goes by the name ‘Vote For the Worst’, whose founders seem to get a kick out of sabotaging the show by instigating people to vote for the worst or most entertaining contestants…multiple times. Add to that radio talk-show host Howard Stern’s on-air endorsement of Sanjaya and you have a formidable vote-bank. Obviously Stern’s sarcasm is lost on people who actually take a shock-jock’s word to vote for a tv show contestant. But more on that some other time. As for the Indian Call Center theory, it has all but become a much ridiculed conspiracy theory, and I only sat up and noticed the extent to which the silliness had gone when a CNN prime time report made a passing reference to it.

And so it goes in the US of A.  Living in this country it is sometimes difficult to take a step back and  take an objective look at the disconnect between life here and the rest of the world, with this nation of otherwise intelligent, creative and caring people obsessing over inanities like American Idol and the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, while its government wages wars that kills and maims thousands and ruins societies in far away lands.

~ by Shubho on April 10, 2007.