Host Ryan Seacrest (left) and judges Simon Cowell (centre) and Randy Jackson from the show 'American Idol' arrive at the Fox January 2006 TCA party held in Citizen Smith in Hollywood on January 17. - REUTERS
LOS ANGELES (AP):
CONSIDERING IT'S the biggest kid on the block, American Idol is becoming quite the bully.
Fox's talent contest regularly has made an art of mocking the untalented who expose their dreams of stardom on TV, but the show's fifth year has the stench of a mean season.
Vulnerable contestants are coming in for more ridicule; bounced contestants are unleashing more extended and expletive-laden attacks on the judges and, we are warned, the future will demonstrate how vicious singers can be when they really want to win.
"We now have contestants who will not let anything get in their way of victory," host Ryan Seacrest told The Associated Press before the show returned. "Some contestants have thrown each other under the bus this season."
Would-be idols know this game can be about more than fleeting fame: It may be 15 seconds or it may be big album sales and a shot at a lasting career, as with Since U Been Gone hitmaker Kelly Clarkson.
ANTI-TENDERNESS
"Shows have to reinvent themselves to stay fresh and invigorated for all these years," said analyst Shari Anne Brill of New York-based Carat U.S.A.
In the past, American Idol (airing Tuesday and Wednesday) upped the age for contestants to 28 and divided the finalists evenly between men and women. This year, it's trying a little anti-tenderness.
Weight and sexuality are favourite targets, as in previous seasons and just like around the typical school yard. But there is new venom in everybody's blood, and emotional fragility be damned.
In last week's Chicago audition, a heavyset woman with an exceptional voice got a thumbs-up from the judges and then chief provocateur Simon Cowell suggested the show might consider a bigger stage.
Also in Chicago, a man with a high-pitched voice got Cowell's brutal career advice: Shave your beard and try wearing a dress.
While the series ultimately is about choosing the audience's favourite performer, the producers have decided to focus the audition segment on "the best of the worst" as well as the truly talented, analyst Brill said.
That puts the judges in the nearly inevitable position of offering smart-aleck comments, such as when Cowell toyed with a highly tanned, fashion-challenged young woman and her mother.
Blaming Cowell for taking the bait or Jackson's discomfort with the contestant of uncertain gender is akin to making actors take the fall for their scripted lines; the producers lead them into the scene and the result is predictable.
In 2004, following the unlikely celebration of spectacularly off-key William Hung, Cowell expressed uneasiness with spotlighting the untalented.
"When you celebrate awfulness it puts you in a slightly uncomfortable position," Cowell said then, adding he was nervous "that we're going to get people coming on the show next year that want to be bad."
Bingo.
