University of Minnesota Moment: American Idol Mania

Transcript

[Announcer]: I’m Rick Moore with the University of Minnesota Moments.

Reality TV's marquee show, “American Idol,” began its sixth season this month. Laurie Ouellette, a U of M communication studies professor, says the show speaks to a number of cultural issues.

[Ouellette]: One is the idea that people are invited to participate in the media and to feel as if they can go beyond being a passive viewer to actually creating our common culture. And that idea is very appealing, even if in reality it doesn’t materialize as we might hope.

[Moore]: Ouellette says Americans as a society have become more and more accustomed to judging ourselves and others. 

[Ouellette]: We are living in a society where all of us are being called upon to judge ourselves and each other relentlessly. We rate our professors, we rate our transactions online, we rate our happy meal and I think this is a part of a larger trend in which the role of government is being outsourced, really, there’s a sense in which the role of the state and its governing functions are changing and it’s up to the individual to be more self-sufficient and to govern him or herself. My work tries to put reality TV within this context and show how in some sense what these programs do is they train us to participate in this culture of judgment, to constantly judge ourselves and to judge others. 

[Moore]: That's Laurie Ouellette for the University of Minnesota Moment