American Idol

I’m addicted, yes addicted, to American Idol. I’ve sat mesmerized as Sanjaya was booted, Jordin grew musically before our eyes, alt-Idol Blake made me laugh, and week after week I’ve rushed to read as many Idol blogs as I can find. Yes, I confess, I really do. I am hooked on singers who interpret the type of songs that used to be featured on the old Johnny Carson Tonight Show…Michael Buble and Celine Dion music. Beautiful though the songs may be, they are not my usual musical fare. Yet there I sit in front of the TV each week, turning to emotional jello as one contestant sings Whitney Houston, while another belts out a Barry Manilow tune. As though I've been salivating for just such songs. My wife and I engage each other in spirited critiques throughout each show. "What?! Melinda's out?!! They can't!!"

There is some astrology in here, too, and not just “his horoscope” vs. “her horoscope.” American Idol emanates from the celebrity-fixated heart of the Uranus-Neptune mutual reception. Uranus—the ruler of Aquarius—is in Pisces while Neptune is in Aquarius. Uranus is projection and technology in the sign of artistic, creative, musical Pisces. Neptune—the ruler of Pisces—is glamour, glitz, and celebrity in the sign of egalitarian Aquarius. We don't just watch stars being born like in an old-fashioned talent show, but we actually participate in making them.

Some American Idol contestants really do become bona fide celebrities, complete with recording contracts, best-selling albums, Grammy awards (Carrie Underwood), tours, and star movie turns (7th place contestant Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls). And we discovered them, voted for them, made them happen. They are ours.

Here’s what the L.A. Times Show Tracker blog wrote:

…behind the curtain, the woman at the helm of this circus [American Idol] feels your pain, and understands exactly how the show plays into your most obsessive tendencies. It all begins during the auditions, says Cecile Frot-Coutaz, "Idol"’s Executive Producer…

She explains, “What’s different with this formula is with the audition phase as the viewer you get to play the A&R person. You’re in your couch at home and you see them walk in like they would walk into your office if you were that big music mogul and you get to say, ‘Yeah, he was bad. Yeah, he was good.’ It gets people invested early on in the process. As a viewer you can start rooting for Carrie Underwood or Kellie Pickler from that very early stage. So that by the time you get to the performance shows, you feel that they’re yours in some ways and you have a connection with them and you’ve established a relationship with that character from the moment they were a nobody and they walked into that room.”

And thus by the time a Melinda has made it to the top three you are presumably in a near frenzy of suspense rooting for this little wanna-be you discovered in the middle of nowhere to grab the brass ring of stardom.

This is really the story of the mutual reception of Uranus and Neptune, where fame is democratized and to some extent owned by everyone. With American Idol, we all get to use modern technology to cast our votes on individual fame and glamour.

In his seminal book on the culture of fame, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History, Leo Braudy did not write about American Idol (my edition of the book was published in 1997). And though he was not writing about Uranus in Pisces or Neptune in Aquarius, he captured the essence of both when he wrote:

But even for the nonfan, there is a larger sense in which the expansion of the possibility for fame and the preoccupation with those who achieve it indicates a deep-seated uncertainty about the survival of individuality itself. Does the increasing complexity and sheer connectedness of the world--the question might run--mean more uniformity or does it mean that self-assertion might be taking on different shapes, unforeseen in the individualities of the past but somehow linked to them? What is the feeling of human presence in a technological world? Can that world be made more intimate by widening the appeal to a communal validation of individual uniqueness?