but that's over now
May. 27th, 2010 05:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhI find that I have two big things to say about last night's Idol finale, and they don't belong in the same post.
A small thing, first: It's unfortunate that the producers of the show don't know how to say no. Remember back in seasons 5 & 6 when the celebrity guests were each tied to a finalist, as a kind of inspiration? Remember Blake and Doug E Fresh and how amazing that was? Ever since Prince showed up, played a song, and fucked off it's just become a series of completely unrelated appearances by old timers promoting their summer nostalgia tours. Yick. Other than Janet probably the best performance was from the pants on the ground guy, who was fucking awesome.
Okay, about the winner. I never thought that a nervous performance by Lee was going to be enough to hand the win back to Crystal; it just played into his underdog status that much more. I was glad to see the judges respond to Crystal and feel that she won it that night, but it wasn't about that night and frankly never is. I'd checked dial idol, even though I was pretty sure it was Lee even as the show signed off Tuesday night, but seeing Ryan's face as he looked at the card told me everything I needed to know. (Remember how in season 2 he let Clay see the card over his shoulder? I have to think that was intentional (and kind, really) so that Clay could have a good reaction on camera.)
Maura Johnston's recap is already up and in it she says:
Earlier Wednesday I read a post by Mike Barthel about Facebook, in which he said:
Where Barthel reveals a bit of a blind spot is in the kind of instant meta-analysis of culture that Maura refers to. It isn't just that you like Crystal or Lee, but that liking Crystal or Lee immediately puts you on one side of a debate, which then gets piled up with additional, sometimes wholly unrelated signifiers. It's easier to see in last year's controversy, where somehow we got from Adam Lambert not winning, to Adam Lambert not winning because he's gay, to people voting for Kris Allen because he isn't gay, to Kris Allen fans being homophobic. And now we have this idea that Idol will never have a female winner again because the young girls and older ladies who vote want to swoon over a male singer.
And where this has pushed me, where both fandom and the conversation about culture that happens in recaps on tons of sites that aren't TWoP, where there are bunches of instant crap theories about why the masses behave as they do is that not only do we not know why, but the why isn't actually important because it's just not actionable. The whys that places like fivethirtyeight look at, the whys of political culture, are crucial because they actually shape our country, and because if you know why people didn't vote for John Kerry maybe you can get them to vote for Barack Obama.
But whatever the lessons of Kris Allen winning over Adam Lambert, they aren't applicable to Lee and Crystal, and even if they were, the machine is too big for Taylor-like manipulations. I could say some things about Lee's win and What It Means, but in the end it would all be the same bullshit that it was last year and the year before and the year before that. I've done this sort of thing myself, rather extensively, both on this blog and for years before I started it, but I'm out of this game now—not just for Idol, but for culture itself, because (1) honestly fuck if I know and (2) as Mr. Lambert would say, it just ain't that deep.
Which is a weird place to be, given that I'm a cultural historian, except for how it isn't. I think these things matter in hindsight, in context, in aggregate, but not in specific tiny moments that can get blown out of proportion. The meaning is there, but it has to be teased out from a distance, once perspective is gained. Sunday news show-type instant analysis is bad enough when it's about politics; when it's about American Idol it's all but useless.
A small thing, first: It's unfortunate that the producers of the show don't know how to say no. Remember back in seasons 5 & 6 when the celebrity guests were each tied to a finalist, as a kind of inspiration? Remember Blake and Doug E Fresh and how amazing that was? Ever since Prince showed up, played a song, and fucked off it's just become a series of completely unrelated appearances by old timers promoting their summer nostalgia tours. Yick. Other than Janet probably the best performance was from the pants on the ground guy, who was fucking awesome.
Okay, about the winner. I never thought that a nervous performance by Lee was going to be enough to hand the win back to Crystal; it just played into his underdog status that much more. I was glad to see the judges respond to Crystal and feel that she won it that night, but it wasn't about that night and frankly never is. I'd checked dial idol, even though I was pretty sure it was Lee even as the show signed off Tuesday night, but seeing Ryan's face as he looked at the card told me everything I needed to know. (Remember how in season 2 he let Clay see the card over his shoulder? I have to think that was intentional (and kind, really) so that Clay could have a good reaction on camera.)
Maura Johnston's recap is already up and in it she says:
There are many theories about why — some people think Lee’s “relatability” helped him win, others think his season-long ascent from the depths of that awful early-season Owl City cover aided his rise in viewers’ eyes, others felt people bristling at Crystal’s season-long front-runner status a la Adam Lambert last year, still others cling to the idea that male contestants are a lock to win the show from now until whenever the rules get changed to limit mass texting from overheated women.
Earlier Wednesday I read a post by Mike Barthel about Facebook, in which he said:
The web in particular increases our ability to find commonality but reduces our perception of individuality.
We rebel against this, of course. One way is through the taste arms-race you can see going on everywhere in US culture, but just as you more finely refine your sensibility to be more exclusive, either you find a whole new community of people who think like you, or a bunch of other people adapt their style to mirror yours. The technology of the web makes this nearly inevitable. But the other way is through insisting on our individuality and the importance of the self even when it makes little sense.
Where Barthel reveals a bit of a blind spot is in the kind of instant meta-analysis of culture that Maura refers to. It isn't just that you like Crystal or Lee, but that liking Crystal or Lee immediately puts you on one side of a debate, which then gets piled up with additional, sometimes wholly unrelated signifiers. It's easier to see in last year's controversy, where somehow we got from Adam Lambert not winning, to Adam Lambert not winning because he's gay, to people voting for Kris Allen because he isn't gay, to Kris Allen fans being homophobic. And now we have this idea that Idol will never have a female winner again because the young girls and older ladies who vote want to swoon over a male singer.
And where this has pushed me, where both fandom and the conversation about culture that happens in recaps on tons of sites that aren't TWoP, where there are bunches of instant crap theories about why the masses behave as they do is that not only do we not know why, but the why isn't actually important because it's just not actionable. The whys that places like fivethirtyeight look at, the whys of political culture, are crucial because they actually shape our country, and because if you know why people didn't vote for John Kerry maybe you can get them to vote for Barack Obama.
But whatever the lessons of Kris Allen winning over Adam Lambert, they aren't applicable to Lee and Crystal, and even if they were, the machine is too big for Taylor-like manipulations. I could say some things about Lee's win and What It Means, but in the end it would all be the same bullshit that it was last year and the year before and the year before that. I've done this sort of thing myself, rather extensively, both on this blog and for years before I started it, but I'm out of this game now—not just for Idol, but for culture itself, because (1) honestly fuck if I know and (2) as Mr. Lambert would say, it just ain't that deep.
Which is a weird place to be, given that I'm a cultural historian, except for how it isn't. I think these things matter in hindsight, in context, in aggregate, but not in specific tiny moments that can get blown out of proportion. The meaning is there, but it has to be teased out from a distance, once perspective is gained. Sunday news show-type instant analysis is bad enough when it's about politics; when it's about American Idol it's all but useless.
