What is the Real Appeal of American Idol?

American Idol, the reality singing competition that has taken the US by storm, is the topic of conversation everywhere you turn. Celebrities, friends, neighbors, and people you wouldn't even suspect are watching and talking about the hit show. But, what is the real appeal going on here? What constitutes good entertainment for present day America, and what is it saying about ourselves?

American Idol has been doing a lot of good things. With its Idol Gives Back special nights, it helped changed the lives of children in extreme poverty, in both the US and Africa. For every vote cast on its special night, sponsors like Coca-Cola and AT&T donated money to CPEF (Charity Projects Entertainment Fund). But is this why we like it? I think not. While donating, and voting that goes towards donating may justify it in our minds, this is not why we watch. Perhaps some of us may even believe it promotes the great democracy of our country; we get to vote, and as a united group we get to decide the winner. But while the interaction we get to have in the lives of the contestants certainly plays a part, I don't believe this is the main reason either.

I believe what we like most about American Idol is that it feeds our evil side. It gets under our skin and awakens the evil pleasure that our parents and teachers tried to break out of us in elementary school. We get to make fun of people. We get to judge people. We get to laugh as we see fights break out and people dreams get crushed. We wish for people to fail and we are happy when they do. And we get to enjoy sing-a-longs. It brings out the evil little kid in all of us. We're like the kids that kick the victim after the bully already knocked him down, when nobody was looking.

Though, like most little kids, we don't tend to think for ourselves. We hate and love people, because other people (who seem to know more about it than we do) hate and love them. We boo Simon Cowell for being too harsh on contestants, or wannabe contestants, but we aren't much different. Out of the three judges he is the obvious favorite, and his opinion is the most respected because he is so hard to please. Whether we hate or love him, or love to hate him, he is the ring leader of our reactions and our tastes in talent. We can't help but feed off his opinion.

We originally liked Simon because we were surprised by him. He would say on television the things we were thinking in the back of our minds, and he would say it to people's faces. His brashness made it okay for us to be brash, and brought that playschool behavior out of us. We don't have to be polite, we can say what we want, and we don't have to deal with the consequences or hurt feelings because we are saying it to a TV screen and our friends. For that hour or two hours away from our daily lives, we are able to bring out our evil little kid to play, and we have a great time doing it.

So, does this animosity for the people of our country come from true disgust, jealousy, or some deep psychological attraction to the humiliation of others? Perhaps, the idea that through all the embarrassment a winner will emerge makes us feel that we have done our part in bringing out a true competitor that is able to withstand the psychological warfare we have thrusted upon him/her. We've embraced the opportunity of doing as nature intended, filtering out the weak and bringing out the strongest and the best. And this seemingly powerful ability given to us helps us pretend to be important. We helped create a celebrity. We got to be bad, imaginative little kids without anyone lecturing us, and that delightful indulgence keeps us coming back every week and every year. Either that or we just really like the singing.