American Idol and The Carnival

I have reluctantly been watching American Idol this season. If I'm truly honest with myself, I watch it more out of habit than actually deriving any sense of enjoyment at seeing the "next great pop star" born before my eyes. Now, don't get me wrong, I am fully willing to get into the TV gutter by watching shows like America's Next Top Model (although the winner never becomes a "top model"). But each year, there seems to be more of an emphasis on the bad, grotesque or belligerent rather than necessarily the talented.

Watching American Idol this year I have been struck by Mikhail Bakhtin's thoughts on the Carnavalesque. "Bakhtin likens the carnivalesque in literature to the type of activity that often takes place in the carnivals of popular culture. In the carnival, as we have seen, social hierarchies of everyday life—their solemnities and pieties and etiquettes, as well as all ready-made truths—are profaned and overturned by normally suppressed voices and energies. Thus, fools become wise, kings become beggars; opposites are mingled (fact and fantasy, heaven and hell)."

What's happened is that people like William Hung and most recently Larry Platt have become the "stars" of American Idol rather than the ones who have "real talent." And while William Hung's (and undoubtedly Larry Platt's) star will fade, so too has Ruben Studdard's and Clay Aiken's (the winner and runner-up, respectively, of Season 2 of American Idol).

Bakhtin's idea that we focus on the grotesque, the sensual, the embodied and the excessive, really speak to our celebrity-obsessed culture where novelty often outweighs any discernible level of talent.