https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyNekbmblXY
Clip: "INSPIRATIONAL! American Idol Judge KATY PERRY CRIES During David Francesco's Audition | Idols Global
“Private contracts, self-fashioning, exercising freedom, and self-governance are invoked as justifications and objectives for current initiatives to "advance" liberal government through public-private partnerships and a greater self-responsibilization of citizens; TV in particular is being made over and reinvented to make it more useful within this rationality about an active, self-possessive, and entrepreneurial citizenry” (Ouellette and Hay 204).
Our focus here is on American Idol as an exemplary reality competition show with a private/public engagement structure, wherein participatory activities such as voting on competitors constitutes civic engagement. By showcasing traumatic stories in which competitors overcome extreme adversity to make it to the Idol audition, American Idol crafts an image of the idealized recipient of social welfare, which is enacted by viewers’ participation in the “democratic process” that is the show’s structure. We can see here how “ participation and citizenship/membership are rationalized as being ‘fair’” within the supposedly meritocratic neoliberal system.(206) The traumatized subject is thus reincorporated into the neoliberal mindset of overcoming adversity by pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, trauma reinscribed within neoliberal rationality.
In this clip, contestant David Francesco explains to the judges how a story of trauma and resilience led him to audition for the show. After having moved to Nashville to begin his music career, he was hit by a car and paralyzed from the waist down. As he outlines his month’s long process of overcoming, the show cuts between clips of him being interviewed (in a separate studio from the audition room), clips of him in the hospital and pictures of his family members and dog. He explains, “This is the next step, trying to reincorporate myself into real life, and then maybe someday I could support myself with music.” By the end of his rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry is moved to tears, while Lionel Richie calls Francesco an inspiration. Francesco thus takes on the role of the ideal "entrepreneurial citizen" whose struggles are never associated with structural societal issues but rather with his personal success in "reincorporating" himself as a functioning citizen.
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