Warren Kinsella on American Idol, Blake Lewis, Jordin Sparks and the decline of our civilization

How terrible is American Idol? Words fail us.
It is much more terrible than being locked out of your car on a cold and rainy night. It is worse than bumping your shin on the coffee table, hard. It is more horrific than McRib, the boneless pork sandwich. It is more dreadful than being stuck in an elevator playing a lengthy Barry Manilow retrospective. It is badder than … well, badder than just about anything you can think of.
American Idol, whose season finale airs tonight, is the nadir of human cultural history, pretty much. But that didn’t stop approximately 40 million people from tuning in, twice weekly, for the past five years. (Including, we sadly confess, members of this writer’s immediate family.) Nothing stops American Idol. It is a juggernaut of awfulness.
Popular culture — and American Idol is nothing if not popular — is like that. It is a commodity: base, venal, and without a soul. Carefully contrived by Hollywood (or some related industry) to be hawked to the largest number of consumers, popular culture is all about maximizing profits, not expanding refinement. It does not aspire to be art.
As a consequence, it doesn’t particularly matter that quite a few of us think that American Idol stinks worse than limburger. American Idol, like all of the best popular culture, is really popular, and that’s what counts.
How did something so monumentally rotten come to be so adored, producing revenues well in excess of US$100-million? The answer is not easily discerned. From the commencement of its first season in June, 2002, American Idol was singularly unremarkable. A singing contest, to wit, judged by three nobodies — session musician Randy Jackson, has-been pop star Paula Abdul, and former Teletubbies producer Simon Cowell — the program wasn’t even original. (It was derived from a British reality series, Pop Idol.)
In cities across the United States, however, thousands of aspiring stars (and, apparently, demented persons) would soon be seen dutifully lining up for a shot at the elusive big time. After signing waivers and offering proof of American citizenship, the hopefuls are screened for talent — or their ability to embarrass themselves onstage. A select number of contestants are then given the opportunity to sing for one minute, a capella, in front of Cowell, Abdul and Jackson. (Later on, viewers get to call in and select finalists.)
Rosie O’Donnell, who knows a thing or two about popular culture, succinctly assessed what generally happens on American Idol. Said O’Donnell in January, from her former perch on the also-popular The View: “If you keep serving people crap, they’re eventually going to think it’s a meal. Three millionaires, one probably intoxicated. Sad.”
Sad, indeed. Cowell, in particular, has achieved the distinction of being a truly loathsome creature in a crowded field of loathsome Tinseltown creatures. With a repertoire mainly limited to facile insults, Cowell recently attracted quite a few critical reviews of his own — when he appeared to roll his eyes at a singing tribute to the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. (Cowell hurriedly denied it all, but the eye-rolling was captured on video, nonetheless.)
None of it matters, apparently. The winner of season one, Kelly Clarkson, has sold millions of albums and won Grammy Awards; a third-season finalist, Jennifer Hudson, has topped the Billboard charts and secured an Academy Award for her role in Dreamgirls. The winner of last year’s contest, Taylor Hicks, captured 63-million votes — considerably more votes than have ever been cast for a presidential candidate (Ronald Reagan, 54-million in 1984). Rival networks call it a ratings “tsunami.” Cowell and Co. continue to make jillions. Civilization continues to decline.
Why does American Idol attract so many, sometimes against their better judgment? Because, one suspects, the program permits its audiences (as did, say, the Roman coliseum) to be maudlin and cruel simultaneously. Viewers delight in Cowell’s canned vitriol, or the inevitable close-up as a younger singer’s slender hopes are crushed. Then, later, they will give a phoned-in thumb’s-up to a singer whose life story is mawkishly sentimental in the right parts.
While the British-originated program is beloved around the globe — spinning off Canadian Idol here and franchises in places as far-flung as Slovakia, Kazakhstan and Finland — American Idol is, truly, American. It is most popular there because it accords with the nostalgic American notion that with hard work, talent and moxie, one will always accomplish great things.
That’s a load of hooey, of course, and so too is American Idol. But millions watch it anyway. They will next year, too.