Word: idol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Theoretically, American Idol should not exist. It's a broad-based mainstream hit when series like that are no longer supposed to be. It has gained viewers in its sixth season, a TV near impossibility. It sells albums, at a time when very little else does. And by awarding a record contract by nationwide vote, it is dedicated to a heretical idea in the niche-media age: that you can please most of the people most of the time...
...dispense music criticism (if "Dawg, that was all over the place for me" counts as criticism). The show also turns even nonvoting viewers into critics, arguing who deserves success and what makes a "good" performance. Week after week, a society that is not terribly self-reflective asks itself, through Idol, what it likes...
...Friday night, gunfire exploded across Baghdad. But it was good news. Shaza Hassoon, daughter of an Iraqi father and Moroccan mother, won Star Academy, an American Idol-like singing competition in Beirut. Families had been gathered in front of television sets across Iraq every Friday night for four months cheering on one of their own. Hassoon won the competition with 7 million votes coming in via telephone and text messages from across the Middle East. The cheering crossed sectarian lines. In the northern - and Kurdish - city of Irbil and neighborhoods packed with Iraqi exiles in Amman, families took...
...known. This correlation occurs with reason: talented people can get away with much worse behavior. I don't want to enable monsters. In fact, I don't want to interact with them. But neither do I want to work in an office staffed solely with smiley faces. Imagine American Idol without Simon, House without House, Family Guy without Stewie. Colleagues of Steve Jobs bear the scars, but wouldn't you prefer him on your team than theirs...
...chronicle the steps by which our hero either exacts righteous revenge or, if it's a tragedy, is crushed by the system. The goal of the movie is to provoke some fellow feeling for the world's underdogs. Then, cleansed and spiritually enriched, you can return to American Idol...