Results tagged “American Idol” from Out There

And Other Crucial Parts of the Culture Puzzle

I've never been a fan of purely reactive writing. Most of it banishes those errant ideas and images that have no obvious connection to the fake trend or genuine outrage of the moment, but are nonetheless a writer's best reason to write.

It's a puzzle, then, to find novel ways to react "new" to the daily cultural-political flood. Maybe the task can be accomplished in pieces.

Jigsaw Part 1: Bloodsuckers

I'm afraid that our favorite TV "crossover" shows are withering. You know, crossovers, the programs that appeal to all shapes and sizes, the ones that full professors pretend to feel guilty about watching. Every season has 'em, but in television as in life, nothing good remains firm. Everything droops.

There's not even a Dorian Gray attic to imagine on the inevitably jowly Desperate Housewives premiere. Ellen on Idol? So You Still Think You Can Dance? As one of my outraged Facebook friends said when I moaned about the early dismissal of Project Runway's two most creative contestants, "Please, they're being asked to choose from Macy's Wall of Accessories."

So what's wrong with Macy's? My late mother sold makeup in the Herald Square store, once to Joan Crawford -- shades of The Women.

It's a plug. The whole show has been a multipronged plug, but now that all the compensatory elements of surprise and conflict and joy of looking have evaporated, there's no hiding it. Didn't someone know that you can't move a sewing circus out of New York, New York and expect it to retain even faux credibility? Plus, that pathetic model "competition" appended to the main hour is like throwing a sweater set onto the runway after the wedding-dress finale. So I have moved to that favorite-show middle ground where I won't lose sleep if I miss an episode -- which every studio knows is the beginning of the end.

Yes, Project Runway has jumped the sharkskin.

Faithful readers may be able to guess which crossover shows I look forward to on Sunday nights. Yes, they're both about bloodsuckers. True Blood is first-class progressive trash, and you needn't even remember its axiomatic trope that Fangs = Fags to find the bloody soap simultaneously comforting and refreshing. I'm about to grill a New York steak, bleu, to prepare for the season finale. Maybe I'll shed a red tear afterward.

To introduce Mad Men's third season, the promotion machinery fastened on its period wall-ovens and stovetops, ignoring utterly the show's -- paradoxically faulty -- critique of advertising's hold on culture. Why faulty? The luscious vintage sets and outfits ignite the very hunger for product that the storylines half-heartedly propose is merely a symptom of mass manipulation.

How else would I have noticed that the white Eva Zeisel dinnerware used in some Midcentury Manse looked not like the designer's vintage Tomorrow's Classic (genuine article below), but instead were newly bought examples of the smart hybrid sold by Crate & Barrel?

I ate that steak, by the way, on sleek plates designed in the early '50s by Glidden Parker. The same dishes were used by Lucy and Rickey during their first year as America's escape valve -- probably not my own particular plates, but you never can really know where aged objects have been.

Next Piece of the Puzzle: Why Bill Viola Is Mah Hero

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"I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader," says Adam Lambert -- remember him? -- as he comes out in the new Rolling Stone. Quelle, quelle surprise, but congratulations nonetheless. 

Yet comments like that are as boilerplate as the mag itself.

Dear Adam: Popular culcha has long ago rendered any such division into schmaltz.

In case you have or anyone has any doubts about that, check out the quite subversive 1952 Disney cartoon short called Lambert the Sheepish Lion. See any parallels, sweetie? The gay-positive metaphors?

Oh, yes, the charming, witty voiceover is immediately familiar as that of the sterling Sterling Holloway -- who, by the way, introduced the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart standard "I'll Take Manhattan" in their very first tandem outing, a series of '20s romps called Garrick Gaieties. Holloway's raspy light tenor, what some have termed a near falsetto, was his calling card. Later, he collected modern art. His admiring bios include the boilerplate "Never married."

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Now that our Idol hangover is over, we may regain some composure and perspective about the relative importance of a manipulated mass election -- sounds presidential, no? -- within the body politic of popular culture. Right? Then how do I explain why I woke up literally singing the word "swing" -- but like a cat wail, "swiiiiiiinnnnnng."

Judy was talking to me again.

"Didn't you see me?" she asked. "I was hard to miss. I had to share some space with Freddie, but I like Freddie, and even with that awful Lee" -- I knew instinctively that she meant Liberace -- "but that was mostly me inside Adam."

And inside Kris? "Yes, it was dear Deanna."

But Judy, Adam lost, and you ...

"Won? I'm 40-years dead, sweetie, and dear Deanna's still kicking."

So that's why I couldn't get my eyes off chubby Glambert, why in spite of his mall-nite hair and lycra-sausage limbs I waited week after week to watch his raw, unstoppable, insoucient nerve.

If for reasons of age or memory you don't know which Judy or Deanna I mean, please let me offer a holiday reprise of American Idol's earlier version, an MGM short subject from 1936 called Every Sunday. In it, 14-year-olds Judy and Deanna are introduced to the filmgoing public in a sweet cinematic duel: classical versus swing. But they're not really rivals; in fact, the girls are as tender in their teamwork as Adam and Kris.

If you like, you can drag the YouTube bar and start the piece at three minutes, but the whole thing is only 10, so take a chance.

By the way, after seeing the short, some MGM genius told a line producer to "dump the fat one."

And in case any novice wants to know why Judy is indelible, just slide the button to 6:20 and look at the way this teenager moves her hips and lips when she gets into her groove and instructs us to ... swing. 

I guess I still take her advice to heart.

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