Facing the music on new talent shows
Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Popstars who?
The fresh-faced five-member group formed from Trans TV's Popstars talent program popped up to make an appearance on Lepas Malam late-night talk show a few weeks ago.
They hit the not too high notes and made all their well- choreographed moves, the Indonesian equivalent of S Club 7 without the Disney TV series or a gaggle of teenybopper followers.
For those in the know (their moms, maybe), the group is Joe, Andi Lee, Elsa, Dini and Dandy. For the rest of us ignorant souls, they were the first products in the percolating TV talent show craze. Relegated to a thankless late-night slot, they are now bringing up the rear amid the country's love affair with talent shows.
While we once had Asia Bagus, which offered a regional contest for the budding Whitneys of the world and launched the careers of such local talent as Krisdayanti, today the airwaves are clogged with star search talent shows taken from foreign franchises.
Popstars is missing in inaction, but Akademi Fantasi Indosiar (AFI) and the long-awaited, humongously hyped Indonesian Idol on RCTI are an almost constant nightly presence. They offer a concert tour of major cities (the former) and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the kids with stars in their sights (both shows).
We not only get to see them harmonize, but also get up close and personal about their lives, loves, losses, the whole emotional, heart-tugging kit and caboodle. Of course, it gets viewers hooked in supporting their favorites, even if it's not so much about evaluating their musical talent as the hard-luck baggage they bring with them.
Obviously, the networks think they have a money-spinner going for them, andAFI certainly has had its moment in the spotlight. In its first run last year, it made household names of the batch of hopefuls, from the eventual winner Veri to runners-up Mawar and Ve, the towering Smile and boy-next-door Dickie.
Tears flowed every week when the finalists were sent packing -- literally, by being given a suitcase and told to leave the stage. Each member of the panel of judges became known for their own idiosyncrasies, with the diminutive Tri Utami taking on the "bad guy" role of Simon Cowell from American Idol.
When the grand final rolled around last February, there were around 400,000 votes by SMS, according to the May 2 edition of Kompas daily.
While Shirley Maclaine may have lost out to Elizabeth Taylor in the 1960 Oscars due to the latter's famous brush with death ("I lost to a tracheotomy," Maclaine reportedly said later), resonant-voiced Ve could not compete with the sentimental pull from Veri's hard-scrabble background, the boy from the boondocks of North Sumatra whose father had once rode a becak (three- wheeled pedicab) for a living.
Although the individual winner, the unprepossessing Veri is now back as part of the ensemble, performing in concerts from Denpasar to Surabaya and Semarang. The Central Java capital was host to last week's extravaganza, which had the performers camping it up in ancient Egyptian garb, with a bit of Superman kitsch thrown in as well.
Veri and the rest have been given their 15 minutes of fame, but the clock is tick, tick, ticking away. Fast. For only a couple of weeks after the Grand Final, the next batch of AFI was ready for its close-up.
The inevitable feeling is that the concept is being relentlessly worked to death, and that the young performers, now on contract, are being exploited for as much as they are worth, a charge that Indosiar has consistently denied.
But AFI does not have the arena to itself anymore. Indonesian Idol is now on the air, taking the Fox TV concept to major cities nationwide. It shows the would-be aspirants as they try to sing for their supper before the judges, composed of musicians Indra Lesmana and Dimas J., singer Titi DJ and radio personality Meutia Kasim.
Despite the blitz of promotion for the series, including the big lead-in of the nail-bitingly close Clay-Reuben showdown from American Idol (except that it happened a good six months ago), Indonesian Idol seems an overbaked, overly slick concept which fails to ignite any real interest.
The shows go on interminably -- the same scene played out over and over, only with different faces in different cities -- with Meutia offering some withering look or pithy put-down, while we at home wonder what she has done lately.
How many times can one watch the same scene of public humiliation, whether it's a guy singing doing the splits as Meutia and co. guffawed behind their hands, or the young woman last week whose false teeth flew out during her performance. Funny at first, perhaps, but it gets stale pretty fast.
It's true that there is no accounting for taste, and the talent shows underline that a pretty face and sweet personality will probably win out over a talented diva with an attitude problem at the end of the day.
Likewise, while talent shows have succeeded in winning the public's attention, the people behind them also need to learn to pace themselves, or else risk becoming a spent force.