000ooo000ooo 2/13

At the end of last class Dr. Casey posed the question: "If American Idol claims to be seeking 'new' artists, why do they all sing old songs?" I think that Benjamin provides a very satisfactory answer to this question: "The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion."(29)
In other words, the singers need to sing songs that people have already heard and that have already been approved. If they sing new songs people may reject the song simply because they don't like the song, not because they don't like the singer. Also, if viewers have already heard the song they have a frame of reference by which to judge the song. They need to know how it is "supposed" to sound before they can judge how well the singer executed it.
The irony of this is that when musicians write songs they usually write them to be performed by a specific performer in a specific way. Rarely, if ever, do they write the song envisioning a 16 year old teeny-bopper girl singing it in front of three "judges" and millions of viewers trying to win a prize. This representation takes the song entirely out of its context. This relates back to the first article we read about art in the age of mechanical reproduction. That article argued that taking art out of its original form led to a decrease in its importance so listening to a CD was not the same as listening to the song live. American Idol takes this one step further.When listening to a CD you can at least close your eyes and imagine you're watching the song performed live. When watching American Idol, there's no way to forget this is an entirely made for TV performance that does not take the original intent of the song into consideration at all. When I see Paula dancing and crying and Simon with a smug look on his face, I simply can't bring myself to imagine that I could be experiencing this song in any other context than American Idol.