Skip to content

American Idol: Facing Homophobia?

2009 March 13
by Kalyn Schofield

The Los Angeles Times features on their website a very interesting essay written by Ann Powers. Ann is a music critic who is questioning the “family friendly” American Idol atmosphere that’s preventing a lot of different talent from being featured and or winning on the show due to religious affiliation, language barriers, or race. 

This is the link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-american-idol10-2009mar10,0,5548765.story?track=rss

I’ve never watched American Idol because I don’t care much for the three judges. But since the show has been around for such a long time I suppose it is worth looking into. The show has become a huge reality TV show with a grand following, spawning coutnless spin-off’s all over the world.

                             

Picture From: SuperHush Reality Show News & Random Ramblings (Website: http://superhush.com)

A lot of viewers responded towards the essay with mixed views saying that the show has tons of homosexuals on the show. While other’s say the lack of homosexuality has nothing to do with how “American” the show want’s to be portrayed.

I’m just curious to know if anyone else who has watched a season or two of the show, can say in their own words, if they think there is a major homosexuality bias issue within American Idol?

from → Uncategorized

2 Responses
  1. Natasha permalink
    March 15, 2009

    I think this raises an interesting question… what does “family friendly” mean? To homophobic people it might mean not showing homosexuals. However, to others, the male hosts’ discussion being “steeped in an outdated frat-boy homophobia that is never funny and often deeply uncomfortable” is anything but “family friendly”. To these others “family friendly” would mean encouraging showing a diversity of people. So I guess what counts as “family friendly” depends on the family.

  2. Baibh Cathba permalink
    March 16, 2009

    A good point. I think people often forget that there are many ways to make a family, and thus many ways to interpret the meaning of “family-friendly”. I wonder who coined the term originally, was it a religious group or something random from pop culture?

Comments are closed.