My 99 Cents

Finally saw an audition on American Idol. Truth be told, I saw the final episode last season, where the white-haired boring guy won and Prince performed at half-time. So, I had seen a crowning, but never the run-up…

The first-round contestants seem like isolated, lonesome people whose exposure to other humans comes solely from watching them on TV.

The whole hotel-room audition thing is a pretty harrowing spectacle. Last week’s contestants really practice the American ethos of ‘If you believe it will happen, and try and try and try (and try), it will happen’. Other considerations (talent, training, money, connections, etc) don’t enter in. The resulting clash between self-delusion and reality makes for cruel, riveting TV.

Example: A young, small, big-eyed, tuneless, clueless contestant “sings”. He says “yo dog” to Simon Cowell. His bravado is ridiculed. Rejected, he tries a little more back-and-forth with Cowell as the camera lingers. Rejected by all 3 judges, he retreats out the wrong door of the hotel conference room (why does one exit door stick in both Seattle and Minneapolis??)

And the ratings are beyond high. No wonder nobody’s in the streets protesting war in Iraq – everybody in the USA is either in line to audition for American Idol, or watching it on TV.

There is truly something deranged about the perseverance displayed by these people. It makes determination itself seem scary. I mean, even when told they don’t make the grade, they WON’T STOP SINGING.

It’s almost impossible to look at it (though I sure did), this raw national exposure of private desire. These folks have been tucked away in bad homes, tiny towns, poverty, aiming their desperation into the mirror for a long, long time. They have pictured themselves impressing the crap out of the celebrity panel, they have imagined 40 million jaws dropping in unison (the small guy even said something like “your mouth will drop” to Simon). They want fame or love or both. I don’t know.

It’s brutal and humbling. Like looking directly inside someone’s chest at their beating heart.

Some are more menacing than others: The hairdresser who finished singing terribly and approached Cowell with a dab of hair gel. Three security guys erupted out of the fucking walls.

Only one contestant compels silence from the panel: A young round guy with an odd, loud voice. He appears to have some sort of developmental disability, and as soon as he speaks the judges grow quiet. This is the ‘Do Not Cross’ line I guess. It took a long time to reach it. Again, the camera lingers.

I don’t know if I can take it. Not because the show is terrible but because it’s sort of powerful – Americans are dreaming alone in rooms. If they could only win it would make up for everything that ever went wrong in their lives, and rescue them from invisibility. I would not want to be one of those judges, beseeched and despised, sitting like Fate itself armed with red plastic cups and sharpened pencils.