Simon Says

Highbrows widely regard the singing competition "American Idol"--and the contest's mascot, its tart English judge, Simon Cowell--as an omen of impending cultural apocalypse. To list the specifics of this grim forecast: Performing more-or-less karaoke, complete with shooting flames and ocean waves projected on a massive video screen behind them, contestants pay homage to the most irksome trifles in the history of pop. (Tonight, we fete the genius of Gloria Estefan; next week, Barry Manilow!) Despite the unspeakable lameness of these acts, their perpetrators have occasionally received vote totals comparable to presidential candidates. And, if you momentarily allow the escapist pleasures of this spectacle to sweep you away, your enjoyment will inevitably be interrupted by the ubiquitous product placements, reminding you of "Idol"'s crassness. (Damn, Coca-Cola red room!) Above all, there's the smug, cynical Cowell in his too-tight Armani t-shirts. His unceasing stream of apercus--"If you were the only person who entered this competition, you still wouldn't win"--are presented as evidence of a sadistic penchant for humiliating unworldly teens and the carny masses of "Idol" wannabes.Leveling this critique at "Idol," however, requires a certain myopia. It mistakes the trappings of the show-- the endless renditions of Phil Collins, the shrieking, sign-waving girls in the audience--for "Idol"'s true contribution to culture. That contribution comes in the form of Cowell, who, along with his fellow judges of lesser intellect, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson, issues critiques of each singer's performance. Every week, he finds new pejorative descriptions for the lame music he encounters. "I think you're possibly the worst singer in the world," he has quipped. Or, "You take singing lessons? Do you have a lawyer? Get a lawyer and sue your singing teacher." But, far from precipitating cultural decline, these vicious performances have restored authority to the one figure that can salvage us from doom: the critic. Critics don't just exist as arbiters of taste and explicators of art. They exist to bemoan their own inability to influence the world. In an essay on book reviewing, George Orwell once portrayed the critic as "a man in a moth-eaten dressing gown ... [a] down-trodden, nerve-racked creature." This selfpitying streak often makes critics sound like militant Muslim enthusiasts for the lost caliphate of Al Andalus--always pining, with somewhat selective memory, for the moment when they exerted genuine authority over Western civilization. Countless books (The Last Intellectuals, What Happened to Art Criticism?, every homage to Edmund Wilson ever written) wax nostalgic for the time when the public paid attention to the likes of Trilling, Leavis, and Greenberg--a renaissance that ended with the cultural reformation of the 1960s. By contrast, we now live in what The Believer's Heidi Julavits has called the "Teflon age of criticism," where reviews don't stick to either artists or consumers of art. "American Idol," however, puts the lie to this nostalgic story line. Whatever influence Edmund Wilson may have achieved in his prime, it hardly compares with the power of Cowell. It is true that Cowell wasn't nurtured by the alcoves of City College or hardened by the rough-and-tumble of Partisan Review. He comes to criticism by way of the far less intellectually rigorous record industry, where he made a career of producing acts like the Spice Girls knockoff Girl Thing and songs like "So Macho," as well as churning out Power Rangers albums. This populist sensibility accounts for his preternatural gift for identifying the ineffable qualities of pop stardom. Call him the Robert Parker of Top 40. Unlike schooled critics, who can distinguish a major from a minor chord, Cowell understands how looks, persona, and "showmanship" can compensate for a competent but otherwise bland performance. And his career producing schlock has given him a superb eye for identifying it. On the program, "Idol" judges render assessments but don't actually vote for contestants. Their power rests entirely in their ability to sway the public--in other words, with the power of their criticism. Although Cowell's harsh pronouncements frequently make him the subject of jeers during the live broadcasts, his opinions routinely lead millions to pick up their phones and vote for his favored candidates. For the past three seasons, he has championed the contest's eventual winner at an early stage in the competition, celebrating singers without obvious prospects of triumphing. Last year, he (alone among the judges) declared country singer Carrie Underwood the inevitable winner of the competition two months before the season finale, thus sealing her fate. (Remind me again: How many readers did Wilson win for the French symbolists?) Cowell doesn't just influence the outcome of the competition; he affects its substance. In response to Cowell's advice, raw-sounding rockers have experimented with unfamiliar genres to expose their "sensitive side"; torch singers have dropped their crutch reliance on ballads. Of course, Cowell isn't shy about claiming credit for these small victories. ("Well, I have to take a certain amount of credit for that performance," he boasted several weeks ago.) When spreading the good news about his favored singers, Cowell avoids the fate of many contemporary critics, especially movie reviewers. After watching so much dreck, movie reviewers get so excited when they encounter a solidly constructed film that they lose control of their faculties, slathering Million Dollar Baby and Crash with superlatives formerly reserved for Fellini and Scorsese. Cowell, on the other hand, will frequently begin his most effusive comments with a deprecating remark about the contestant's hair style or past performances. And, even in his most enthusiastic moments, he'll rarely say more than "very good" or "it worked." But, in his restraint, he has achieved the ultimate critical fantasy--to actually shape the objects of criticism, to play the role of co-creator. When Cowell issues his judgments, he likes to begin by denying the obvious. "I don't mean to be rude," he apologizes. Then he will go on to say something like, "You have about as much Latin flair as a polar bear. It was horrendous." And, to be fair, he isn't truly rude. His comments more precisely fall within a subgenre of criticism known as "snark," to borrow a phrase from Julavits's widely discussed essay on the state of criticism. Snark, by her definition, is when "reviews are just an opportunity for a critic to strive for humor, and to appear funny and smart and a little bit bitchy, without attempting to espouse any higher ideals." For Julavits, snark, which she denounces as both self- serving and nihilistic, has played an essential role in creating modern-day critics' impotence. This definition of snark superficially captures Cowell. But it also gets Cowell profoundly wrong. His meanness is the source of his authority. When he keelhauls contestants, his favored terms of abuse are "karaoke," "cabaret," "cruise ship," and "wedding singer." These cut-downs capture the essence of "Idol." Contestants are singing well-known pop songs. Successful singers are those who transcend the artificiality of the format and become more than "some ghastly Xerox machine." And, while Cowell may be harsh, he is rarely strident. He has retracted criticisms that don't hold up on his second watching of the show. "We were wrong," he told contestant Katharine McPhee a few weeks ago after deciding that her rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing" had something after all. Because he never fails to point out crap--and because he has the honesty to admit failure--viewers actually trust his opinions. Cowell, if we're honest, also owes his authority to his company at the judges' table. His judgments usually follow comments by former Los Angeles Lakers cheerleader Paula Abdul and former Journey bassist Randy Jackson. Both embody the characteristics praised by Julavits. They refrain from gratuitous bitchiness and self-consciously follow every critique with constructive criticism. "It was just alright for me, dude," is Jackson's euphemism for wretched. If Abdul can't find anything praiseworthy in a performance, she will applaud a contestant for choosing good shoes. "We love you!" she will add. The tandem has styled itself the anti-Cowell. They seem to take great pleasure in waxing indignant about Cowell's pistol-whippings, with Abdul and Jackson frequently leading choruses of boos directed at the Brit. This avoidance of snark may make Abdul and Jackson better human beings, but it makes them irrelevant, mealy-mouthed critics. Unlike Cowell, they have never exerted clear influence on the course of the competition, never anointed a winner or sunk a loser. And, in the end, their niceness doesn't expose their moral superiority-- just their lack of conviction and confidence in their own taste. Unfortunately, Cowell has used his "Idol" success as a springboard for expanding his empire of schlock. He generated a string of not very edifying reality TV shows, such as "Cupid" (wherein Americans voted on potential husbands for a single woman) and "American Inventor" (which brought us such life-changing products as the Flushpure toilet seat lid), as well as the requisite celebrity-at-the-height-of-fame memoir, I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But . .. His latest confection, a boy band composed of opera singers, Il Divo, has, shockingly, ascended to the top of the charts. And premiering in June is Cowell's ultimate Waiting for Guffman-like TV production: the hopefully ironically named "America's Got Talent," which will expand the "Idol" format to include dancers, comedians, and even animal acts. What makes this so tragic isn't that his projects will inject so much more garbage into the culture; it's that Cowell might be ignoring his true calling. Last I checked, the Partisan Review franchise is still available. P14 As both my husband and I scrambled to meet work deadlines last week--while simultaneously juggling multiple doctors' appointments and assuring our daughter's day care teachers that, yes, one of us would still be able to watch the class for an hour during the monthly staff meeting--it once again struck me: What most modern marriages really need is an extra wife. I've been thinking about this a lot lately in response to all the buzz surrounding HBO's new polygamy-themed hit, "Big Love." Conservatives have taken to brandishing the show as Exhibit A in the fight against gay marriage. That is, once we breach that hard, bright line delineating marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the next thing you know, we'll all be living in multi-spouse chaos, with too many kids, credit card bills, pool toys, cat fights, complex copulation schedules, and Viagra prescriptions for any sane person to keep track of. To a certain extent, I agree (with the criticism of polygamy, not of gay marriage), but largely because "Big Love"'s Henrickson clan has approached this whole multi-spouse business from exactly the wrong angle. As in real life, the show's polygamy--or, more specifically, its polygyny--is wrapped up in the biblical mandate to be fruitful and multiply. As soon as one wife gets too old and run down to breed efficiently, you bring in a new model. But let's face it: No matter how devoutly Pat Robertson wishes it were so, none of us is living in Old Testament times. And the major problem facing the American family today is not a shortage of children. In far too many modern families, however, there is a corrosive shortage of support--of the physical, logistical, and, perhaps most importantly, emotional kinds--once consistently provided by your garden variety housewife. Just look at the ever-growing pile of articles, books, and polls pointing to how much stress and friction couples are suffering in their eternal struggle to balance conflicting work and family duties. Typically, the gist of these discussions is that, if only women could find a way to lighten the domestic load that still tends to fall disproportionately on their shoulders, marital bliss would follow. Maybe. But probably not. Certainly, there's no question that having good child care and a husband who knows his way around the kitchen can make a gal's life easier. And, for those with the financial means, an army of highly competent domestic help can remove most of the sting of housekeeping. Still, no matter how many nannies or housekeepers or personal assistants the more affluent among us employ, at the end of a long day, most of us still won't come home to someone whose primary mission in life is to see to the well-being of our households. Even if the government began issuing every family its own Mary Poppins and men suddenly decided that they desperately wanted to spend their evenings folding laundry and frosting cupcakes for preschool, this still wouldn't address the emotional and spiritual void left by the disappearance of the traditional housewife about which Caitlin Flanagan writes so nostalgically in her recent book To Hell With All That. With her unflinching focus on what we lost with the women's movement, Flanagan has drawn heavy fire from many working mommies and their ilk. But the book is so inflammatory in part because of its uncomfortable-but-tough-to- dispute observations. For instance, at the end of a chapter examining our tendency to farm out domestic chores once handled by housewives, Flanagan notes: "What's missing from so many affluent American households is the one thing you can't buy: the presence of someone who cares deeply and principally about that home and the people who live in it." Of course, it's not only affluent households missing this nurturing figure. Moving down the income ladder, the issue of moms working may be more about economic need than personal fulfillment, but the result is the same. And, before we blame this entire mess on mom's selfish insistence on a career, keep in mind that even today's full-time mommies bear little resemblance to the housewives of yore. As Flanagan points out, just note the difference in nomenclature. A huge chunk of today's "stay-at-home moms" are home because they are utterly devoted to raising perfect, perfectly adjusted children; but, with all the music lessons, soccer practices, and tumbling camps for the kids, they often have as little (maybe even less) time to devote to their houses and marriages as do their working counterparts. In these households, as surely as in those of hard-charging careerist mommies, gone is the kind of woman who greeted her husband at the door each evening with a kiss and a cold martini, assured him that the homefront was under control, and insisted that he tell her all about his day in the trenches. It is into this breach that an extra wife could step. Better still, since the kind of multi-spouse arrangement I'm envisioning isn't about maximizing the number of offspring, one could just as easily have a household with two husbands. Indeed, the key to this brand of polygamy would be to make clear up front that the second-spouse slot was for a woman or man specifically not interested in procreating. After all, how could you save labor with two full families' worth of kids but not two full families' worth of parents? Obviously, this kind of life wouldn't be for everyone. The search for a less self-abnegating existence is, after all, what destroyed the institution of housewifery to begin with. But maybe with a bit of clever marketing, you could appeal to men and women looking to indulge their inner domestic goddess--or simply to find stable companionship--without the strain of bearing all the responsibilities of spousehood alone. Despite the obvious advantages of an extra spouse, some couples might be a tad skittish about jumping into anything so permanent as a second marriage. Never fear: For them, I have an alternative solution proffered by a Georgetown student responding to a blog item I recently wrote on this subject. What I seemed to be advocating, noted the student, wasn't a full-fledged second spouse so much as a marital intern--unpaid, naturally, as all good interns are. Now that is exactly the kind of outside-the-box thinking my husband and I could use at our house. Just give us a call, kid. We've got a pile of laundry and a defrosted pork roast awaiting your tender ministrations. And we both like our martinis made with gin, not vodka. We're traditional that way.