Let’s imagine for a moment the possibility of an Adam Lambert win in the face of all the Danny Gokey fans aligning themselves with straight, married, Christian Kris Allen (who is pretty much David Archuleta with pubic hair).
There are serious Ameri-capitalist questions to be answered in the alternate universe of a Lambert Idol.
Imagine, purely speculatively, Coca-Cola executives and Ford marketing directors sitting around steel tables forty-feet long, assessing the possibility that Adam Lambert could win American Idol.
“Oh, one last thing on today’s agenda,†starts a marketing director for Coke Inc., hands flipping through a gold-laced memo book paid for with the blood of Guatemalan workers who tried to unionize, “Our contingency plan for an Adam Lambert win on American Idol.â€
“This is problematic,†says a gray, pruning executive at the head of the table, a faint mumble forty feet away.
A steely woman in a pantsuit the same shade of gray as the table sits across from the marketing director, hands curled into a double fist of concern. “What if he’s, you know, a political homo?â€
“You mean like Rosie O’Donnell political?â€
“Yes.â€
Mumbles of concern sprout down the table.
The marketing director sighs. “Gay marriage has been big this year. Lambert could stoke those flames into a firestorm, a firestorm that could singe our branding.â€
A jockish executive who floated through his MBA at Arizona State laughs. “Flames, I get it. ‘Cause he’s a faggot.â€
“Calm down Brett,†the director says. “Seriously. Will this mean Coca-Cola is endorsing gay marriage?â€
The steely woman says, “Simon Cowell is contracted to sip from his twenty-ounce mug of Coke every three minutes; no one has complained about that.â€
“For the last time, Cowell isn’t gay,†the director moans, “he just likes V-necks and has a fetish for crew cuts.â€
“But he’s so catty and Eurofaggy,†complains the woman. “It hasn’t been good for our rural numbers.â€
“Yeah,†Brett broods, boxy shoulders seizing, too-prominent brow furrowing, “think about those rural numbers if Lambert actually wins. Black eyeliner and nail polish, cock-sucking, fucking ass eater… over my dead Coke-chugging body.â€
“Dr. Pepper is making huge inroads in the South,†the steely woman says. She taps her laptop and an ominous declining line graph flashes on the wall. “Our Georgia and Texas numbers are nosediving. It was bad enough our CEO went to Obama’s inauguration, now we’re going to put a fucking Coke can in Lambert’s hand?â€
“Wait,†starts a young nerdish intern who has been scribbling notes furiously the entire time. “I thought Coca-Cola was trying to progress. That’s why we instituted a non-discrimination policy for gays.â€
The rest of the table laugh riotously, even the old man at the head. After a stretched minute, they settle.
Brett wipes a tear. “Wow man. Most people don’t even know the laws in their own state, let alone the EEO policies of a Fortune 100 company. That change was made to throw a sausage to gay lobbyists and media and to enrich our coastal urban appeal. We hardly promote it otherwise.â€
A dawn of realization washes over the steely woman’s face. “We’ve got the power to have it both ways. We didn’t build ourselves into the world’s most admired company by taking sides. If Lambert wins, we can pay him three million dollars to deep throat a Coke Zero in the Castro and then turn around and do a new promo campaign for the U.S. Army.â€
“Even better!†pipes up the marketing director. “We can tie it together. Have Adam sing the National Anthem at a base in Afghanistan deep-throating our new Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero. He can be straight and gay at the same time!†The director weaves his fingers together like two bony rakes.
“He can do it with the Elvis hair he had Motown week!†the steely woman chimes rapidly.
“We can put it on YouTube!†Brett punches the air.
“Synergy!†the table cries like any normal person would cry “Eureka.â€
The building then explodes. Everyone dies. Boom. Death.
But none of this “fictional†discussion will matter if he loses. Adam Lambert faces a daunting battle Tuesday, a battle in the gurgling culture war between left and right, rural and urban, straight and queer.
Kris Allen has had the luxury of never changing his image the entire season. He has been plaid shirt, jeans, smarmy Arkansas dark horse every fucking week, while Adam Lambert has shifted with Madonna-like klutziness from 80s rocker, to Tré Cool punk, to fresh-faced Elvis temptation, and back to his queerish self.
This Tuesday he will have to climb the highest mountain of transformation: morphing into an American Idol. Adam Lambert is the epitome of the chameleonic nature of homo in America. Pick a color on the rainbow Adam. I’d want you to win as yourself, emo bangs and nail-polish and all. I’d want you to come down those flashing Seacrested stairs as a genderfuck Broadway showboy … because I know that’s what you want to be (I’ve seen your YouTube videos).
If you could win over America as that, you would prove we are shifting into, not a gay-blind society (a lamentable erasure of identity), but a gay-apathetic society: Where a boy from San Diego can be judged by middle America on ability, talent and prowess, and not whether he looks like Marc Almond and puts dicks in himself.
Or maybe Adam will do something completely understated, something that sidesteps the culture battles and image wars and appear as an Obaman chimera of identity, descending from the ceiling as a glowing gold figure of unity between queer and flyover country.
Perhaps he’ll be wearing a tuxedo, or jeans and a plain white t-shirt (but still some nailpolish, maybe red, white and blue on each hand), silhouetting his queer image into just that voice, that voice which catapults through octaves with Auto-Tune-like precision (and everyone fucking loves Auto-Tune these days). I’ve been talking this whole time of gayness as an image thing (because that’s what this show is about), but he doesn’t need it. He shouldn’t need it.
That voice, if you close your eyes and listen carefully, is queer. It’s showy, bombastic, nearly predictable in its theatrics, but there’s an earthy motherly lesbian wailing too. It’s Cher and Rob Halford of Judas Priest and k.d. lang. It’s pumped full of queer rage in the strains for equality in Michael Jackson’s Black and White, the melancholy trills of queer isolation in Tears For Fears’ Mad World and the overstated rebel in Born to Be Wild.
Oh, I’m sorry straight America, am I hijacking your cultural artifacts and turning them into something gay? Of course. We stole the rainbow. And now we’re going to take your Top 40. Deal with it. That’s what this whole season has been about. That’s what all the Gokey fans, Ford marketers, and show producers have been petrified of for the past five months: the complexity and uncertainty of an American Idol who isn’t painfully mediocre.
It all hangs on roughly 30 million voting Americans looking at the possibility of a Kris Allen win, comparing him to the pattern of safe snoozefests like David Cook, Taylor Hicks, or Carrie Underwood, and screaming together in world-ending Danny Gokey fashion: Dream on!
Rob Wolfsham hails from the glorious suburbs of Lubbock.
Get to know Rob (and Lubbock) better by reading his blog Lubbock Blows.
And then order up a copy of his Cleis Press debut: Boy Crazy: Coming Out Erotica.
© 2009, Rob Wolfsham. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com
“Have Adam sing the National Anthem at a base in Afghanistan deep-throating our new Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero. He can be straight and gay at the same time!”
OK, so my bad: Drinking coffee while reading this article. Keyboard now destroyed.
But thanks anyway, I needed that. Really great article.
I would question whether the advertising agencies hired by Coke and Ford (MacLaren McCann and JWT Detroit respectively) would actually give a damn about Lambert’s sexuality. In the end it would always come down to, “Is he selling product.” You can look at it in the cynical way you have in this article, but it seems a little far fetched.
I like where the second half goes, what with gaying up hetero culture and all, but what is with all the arbitrary highlighting?
very nice article sham-wow
The history of that show is that Southerners almost always win it. I don’t follow closely so I’m not sure if I missed any seasons, but Kelly Clarkson (Texas), Reuben Studdard (Alabama), Fantasia (North Carolina), Carrie Underwood (Oklahoma) and Taylor Hicks (Alabama) are all from the South. Jordin Sparks is from Arizona – a break from the pattern – and David Cook is from Missouri, which is pseudo-South.
Still, based on that history, Kris Allen, from Arkansas, has the advantage. Allen is also more gender-normative, which probably has a bigger impact on success than sexual orientation alone.
If Lambert gets a huge gay vote (who are no doubt a disproportional percentage of American Idol viewership) then I think he’ll pull it off.
It’s quite simple, he just won’t sponsor anything if he wins. No dancing on top of a Ford a.l.a. Taylor Hicks, and he definitely won’t be fellating a coke. Or who knows, maybe Coke and their demographic testing will decide that Adam is “hip” and “now” and pay him to do whatever no matter what he says about gay rights or being gay. Your imagination is frightening, and I want to live there. Wonderful story here, I keep re-reading the first part because it’s just too rich. And I had no idea there were such gay pics of Adam. Great finds!
I am a gay rural Arkansan. I don’t like Adam Lambert. OMG! Is the CA NY FTL queer enforcement brigade going to come down on a chopper and dye my hair? I ve never read such nonsense! Has any of these queens ever heard of Elton John? Why do we HAVE TO fit into these stereotypes? This may not even be his real self! What if he really does look like Kris under all that makeup? It’s more despicable to me to hide your real self under homo goth – Here’s a radical idea – Be out of those warmed over Gene Simmons getups and out in the closet and sing and have America vote for you. After all, Barack Obama didn;t pretend to be white, but still got 68%! Nuff Said.
Have you watched any of the kid’s performances at gay bars and cabarets in LA before he went on American Idol?? Do a simple Youtube search and see what pops up… Adam Lambert’s real self is the one wearing makeup and shiny pants. Sorry.
And get the fuck out of Arkansas already! Jesus!
I ll do that when he gets out of the closet! Never!
Isn’t Arkansas a red state? And wtf to use your kind of expressions…how much more out of the closet do you want the kid to be on a mainstream show? He’s voraciously talented and he’s being himself and also giving a great show. Tonight, when he sang Freddy Mercury’s part with Queen it was stunning. Anything and everything he sang tonight rocked the house. Kris did his duet with the country guy and you couldn’t even HEAR him, he has no voice. My god, how he won idol I’ll never know.
Sorry Adam.
I think Queen should sing WITH Adam Lambert. Adam is the best singer in rock since Freddy Mercury. No more American Fido for me. (Doesn’t Kris kind of sing like a tone-deaf dog howling at the moon?)
Anyway, the positive side of this debacle for Adam is that American Pie-hole music producers don’t own his ass for an entire year, and he can make the triple-platinum album that doesn’t compromise his talent now. Have you ever noticed that the Americal Idle winner rarely has a successful music career (the single exception being Carrie Underwood)?
…”the blood of Guatemalan workers who tried to unionize”??? Your stupid extreme left wing remark is hollow. There are free(usually left wing)unions in Guatemala. The only place that has no free unions is Cuba. In Cuba unions HAVE to be part of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Grantward don’t forget Kelly Clarkson and Jordan Sparks
I never watched American Idol until tonight (since the first season when I was in high school). My take-away is – wow – I was shocked to see Chris Allen won, because it was painfully obvious that Adam Lambert had a more powerful voice and stage presence. When Allen won, the first expression to wash across his face was clearly a pang of guilt, and the first thing he said is that he shouldn’t have won. That could be modesty, but I doubt it. Even he knew Lambert was better, and I wonder if Allen was thinking Lambert lost becuase he’s gay.
Someone I know suggested to me that maybe Lambert threw the contest on purpose (if you must know who, it was my mom, who follows the show but has no gaydar at all because she thought Lambert was straight). She said Lambert’s most recent performance was low-key and boring, not his style at all, and that he probably didn’t want to win becuase the contract and corporate deals that come with winning might clash with his personal style. My take away from a very superficial analysis of him is that he is a really good politician, and would know how to delicately lose on purpose, and that coming in as number two is better for furthering his aspirations.
Lambert is a very natural crowd pleaser and doesn’t need the help of the deals Idol sets up. Chris Allen – charming and good-hearted as he is – will last as long as his teenage girl following thinks he’s physically cute. I have no doubt that Lambert will end up with a bigger and longer-lasting career than Chris Allen.
In other news, Lambert is young, gay, edgy, intelligent and alternative. I wonder if he reads Nightcharm, eh?
Victory. Whooo Pig Soooie. My earlier comments last night proved sage. People are voting more than the sound of their voices. Lambert has no control over how many people vote for him. My theory is that he tried to stick out like a sore thumb throughout the show to get himself noticed. However, this would only go so far. I repeat again, he should have stopped the dyeing and the eyeliner a while back when the “image” differences between him and the other two or three were obvious and stark. If Lambert would have toned down his “image”, his voice may have given the edge with the other 99 million votes. Given the image Lambert has transmitted, I’m afraid the only people that will voluntarily buy his music will reside in the gay disco. Another chit for Arkansas. Hillary 2016.
Looks like the forces that be conspired to make Kris Allen the winner. Hopefully Adam will land some nice runner up endorsements. I believe the people who came in second generally get some level of fame afterward. If not, we’ll know for certain they were too afraid of ‘the gay’.
I’m completely shocked. I’m curious to hear what the author of this article had to say. Apparently he’s from the south…and gay…what the fuck happened?
I for one am glad he lost they would have tried to make him more “marketable” by heterizing him. He will be just fine like Jennifer Hudson before him this is probably for the better.
@ Christian Q
I framed this from with the expectation that Kris Allen would win, because there was nearly no way Adam could overcome the Gokey effect. I’m not shocked, but Kris Allen’s shock was adorable.
Obviously, according to Jay, I’m a radical left-wing anti-corporatist, so I welcome Adam’s new creative freedom afforded to the second place finish. And I think he wanted this too. The finale, particularly the KISS and Queen medleys, was the best thing to ever happen to the show. Adam came down as the gay showboy I hoped for. I still can’t get over the gold boots and the caged shoulder armor. It was outrageous and a total comfort and freedom in expression, particularly the dramatic eyebrow lift at the lyric “me and the boys will be playing all night.” Love it. Can’t wait to see what he does next as a free gay man.
ew Tony just DIE ALREADY lol
As Barbera Streisand puts it, “I’m still here!” . . . But seriously, Arkansas has already made a mod goth contribution, their name is Evanescense. P.S. Who was that on my radio this afternoon singing “No Boundaries”?
omg at first you were my favorite now you’re not!!!!
jk