The show is so awful, but I always end up watching it anyway.
This Washington Post review had me genuinely laughing out loud. The reference to all the "extremely dramatic singing" is my favorite line....
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American Idol: Everything That's Wrong With America
The new season of "American Idol" did the impossible last night: Showed more scenes of torture than "24."
The judges and the viewers were tortured by contestants whose delusions of grandeur and hegemonic vanity had led to them to think that they could sing. Simon and Randy responded to the appalling performances with the kind of nuanced reviews and hand-holding you would expect Jack Bauer to offer a terrorist. Paula seemed rather out of it, as though weighing the option of passing out. Even she was more animated than the guest judge, Jewel, who seemed to be following someone's advice to just sit there and be as blonde as possible. [Actual quotes and names of contestants and stuff like that can be found in the excellent piece by Lisa de Moraes.]
Collectively they told the majority of contestants that they were putrid, and that, as Simon put it at one point, their futures would not involve singing. This came as shocking news to many contestants, who, demonstrating one of the core weaknesses of American culture, had been told again and again that they had a talent that they in fact lacked. What we saw was the self-esteem movement exploding on prime-time television. We saw young people raised in the Everyone Gets A Trophy culture being told the truth for the first time in their lives. Gosh it was painful to watch, unless, of course, you're a sadist, in which case it was hilarious.
"American Idol" is, on many levels, a catalog of all that is wrong with our country. First you have the pathogen of overkill, which infects all creative ventures these days and manifests itself on this particular program as extremely dramatic singing. Imagine "Over the Rainbow" sung as though it's the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Everyone wants to sing so loudly and with so many warbles and yah-yahs and pulmonary flourishes that the judges are blown against the back wall by the shock wave.
More broadly, you have celebrity worship merging with individualism to create the delusion that no one is allowed to be anything other than exceptional. Everyone must be a star. We saw all these people of ordinary talent declaring that they would become the next American Idol because they were "unique." These people had dreams, but some no longer had jobs -- they had quit their employment in order to travel to Minneapolis to make fools of themselves. The gleeful producers milked their humiliation for all it was worth; the camera did not flinch as a contestant, shattered by the news that he couldn't sing, wept outside the audition room, saying he had never been so insulted in all his life (even as Simon, as sensitive as a shark, said cheerily, "I think he took that well").
Also, the show is on Fox, which is arguably another thing wrong with America, but that's a screed for another day.