Facing the music on new talent shows

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.