Excerpt of American Idol Research Paper for Course Called "Listening to American Pop Music"

Music on Television, Then and Now: American Bandstand, American Idol and the Search for an American Image (An Excerpt from a 2010 Essay from my course on “Listening to American Pop Music”)
By Greer Grenley
Music and television have a complicated relationship. Although authenticity has always been one of the most important aspects of music according to music critics and enthusiasts, music on television (not music heard on television, but rather, shows about music) has been able to exist in an idealized, unauthentic, and unrealistic form. A perfect example of a music show that does not necessarily represent reality but instead presents clean-cut, wholesome Americans is Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Although this show remained on-air for decades, the 1950’s, a racially troubled time for America, was when the show was at its peak. American Idol is a modern-day version of American Bandstand in the sense that it creates a viewer’s nostalgia for the era of American Bandstand by showcasing music and dance routines from many decades, including the 1950’s. It also represents wholesome musicians who are to become the “idols” of American youth. However, American Idol has a controversial history where the issues of racism have come to light.
Instead of hiding prevalent racism in order to maintain the wholesome, clean-cut image, American Idol instead creates what is almost a form of reverse discrimination: some of the contestants are constructed around racialized representations of themselves. The winner of Season 3 was Fantasia Barrino, an African-American teenager and single mother from North Carolina. She showed intentional signs of not being very sophisticated and continuously referred to herself as “just a country girl.” On the “American Idol tour”, she sang “Summertime,” a song originated in George Gerswhin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), a musical written by white Americans about the experience of being African American.
However, there have also been discussions about blatant racism on the show. Online threads accused the show of voting-based racism when an African American finalist named Jennifer Hudson, who was a favorite early on, was eliminated. Viewers were mad not just because of her departure, but because the three finalists with the lowest amount of votes that week were all African American (Jennifer Hudson, La Toya London, and Fantasia Barrino). The host, Ryan Seacrest, addressed the public in the opening remarks of the following week’s episode. He said he had received letters, phone calls, and threats, and as the studio audience angrily shouted, he said that that is how American voted; if the result of the vote was unsatisfactory, it was the fault of those who voted and not the producers of the show.
Yet, despite all of this, there is an interesting pattern of who becomes the most popular or successful musician, regardless if he or she actually even wins the show. Season one’s two semifinalists were Kelly Clarkson, a white young woman from Fort Worth, Texas, and Justin Guarini, a half Caucasian and half African American young man from Pennsylvania. Clarkson was deemed the winner and has had a very successful musical career, releasing several singles that reached number one on the billboard charts and selling millions of worldwide concert tickets. She perhaps presents more of the wholesome, white bread American image than Guarini would have – she is white, yes, but also from a very “American” state (Texas) and also represents the “good-girl” image. Season two’s finalists were Ruben Studdard, a large African American man from Alabama, and Clay Aiken, a scrawny white man from North Carolina. Although Studdard was voted the winner, it is in fact Aiken who has had a more successful music career. His first solo album, Measure of a Man, debuted at number one of the Billboard charts, whereas Studdard was dropped from his record label in 2007 due to poor album sales. Despite how America voted, Aiken’s popularity post-Idol proves that Aiken is in fact easier to advertise as a proper wholesome, clean-cut image of America. Both finalists were from the south, so location probably does not play a big part in this. They both were born in the same year (1978) so age also does not play a factor. Aiken is white, although the race of the contestant doesn’t always impact how successful they are. Jennifer Hudson, who is African American, didn’t even make the final two rounds of American Idol and yet she won an Academy Award for her role in the movie-musical Dream Girls and has been seen in other movies since then. If Aiken’s popularity is not an issue of race, then perhaps it is because Studdard, who is very large and has recently tried to lose weight, does not fit the "ideal" of what the population wants its rock or pop idol to be. Yes, the audience did vote for him, because sometimes the voice is good enough that someone who doesn’t fit the mold gets through. However, these surprise winners do not always become big stars; the odds are stacked against them because they are not ideal in physical appearance, so they can't continue the momentum and truly make it.