‘American Idol’: A very thin line

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Each season of ‘American Idol’ asks our nation not just to choose our champion, but to decide what kind of people we are. What makes us, American viewers of ‘American Idol’ (as opposed to viewers of ‘Lithuanian Idol’ or ‘Indonesian Idol’ or any other franchise of the worldwide empire) unique? In choosing an idol, we say what as a people we aspire to be -– are we a whimsical beat boxing people or are we at heart a perky yet sincere balladeering people? The great questions of our age each year sort themselves out on the ‘Idol’ stage.

This year, the preseason audition episodes force us to confront another question haunting society: Where is the line between deluded belief in one’s talent and actual mental illness, or sadder still, mental handicap?

This is the line that the audition episodes walk. We all as a society agree that it is wrong and not endearing to mock the disabled. We also as a society believe that it is impossible not to laugh at healthy-minded people who nurture catastrophic blind spots about their own abilities. The show by and large seems to recognize that line, saving its worst abuse for the merely misguided, while the truly, clearly handicapped receive gentler letdowns.

However, in this preseason, I find myself questioning whether this divide can be defined as neatly as we would like to think. The giant hulking fellow, for instance, who walked in circles talking to himself, protected his excruciating voice on the advice of Christina Aguilera and who reported, “I sing so well my dad would say, ‘I hate you,’ ” clearly seemed to have things going on beyond just acoustic overconfidence. Philadelphia’s glitter girl who lived with her mother in a one-room apartment and launched into borderline Tourette rantings similarly appeared to be driven by some larger issues.

A less-clear question arose when it came to the Elliot Yamin singing park ranger: Is he just really nice or might he be, perhaps, a little slow? Could his impossible belief in his horrifying singing be a symptom of something else rather than the disease? Although -- at least in his backstory reel -- he seemed completely functional, it’s hard to believe there is not something more going on there.

And if one is going to go down that slippery slope, is the singing waitress who screeches to the cheers of her model boyfriend really just that out of it? At what point does being that out of it become a problem that we should be worried about?

And what of that other demographic –- the people, like the “Guyshadow”-wearing kindergarten teacher, who seem to be consciously making spectacles of themselves in tragic bids for negative attention but who also still pretty much believe they are going to become the next American Idol. How can such a rich, multilayered denial coupled with delusion not be a sign of something more scary than funny going on (not that pre-homicidal-rampage scary can’t also be funny).

But at the end of an ‘Idol’ audition episode, what the two hours really bring to light is just how fine a line our society walks every day. How often in each of our days do we stand beside people who wrongly consider themselves intelligent, beautiful, witty, brave? Often it seems just about everyone we know (certainly everyone I know) is deeply, horribly deluded in some way or another. And in real life, Simon Cowell never shows up with their glass of cold water. In the end, don’t the audition episodes really point out to us that, viewed under the lights of network television, much of our world may not be just amusingly misguided but in fact -- as Simon labeled Mr. Guyshadow -- “very menacing”?

‘American Idol’ may not always have all the answers, but it always shows us the questions to ask.

Postscript: Watching the animated opening where the little character rides the elevator past giant live billboards of past Idols, it seems the figures displayed go straight from Carrie Underwood to Jordin Sparks and that Taylor Hicks has been wiped from the official history. I have replayed the opening five times on my TiVo and can’t see Taylor. Does anyone out there see him someplace that I’m missing?

-- Richard Rushfield