Sociological Perspective Paper

Sociological Perspective Paper

American Idol is a television program that showcases amateur singers in the hopes of finding one who will ultimately become the Ð''American Idol'. The makers of the show travel all over the country in search for this person who the talent to fit the image of this idol. Thousands of contestants audition for a chance to become this icon. The process of elimination is used to find the one that would eventually hold this lofty title. There are several rounds of the competition where the contestants perform in the hopes of moving on the next level of the competition. It is eventually truncated down to twelve hopefuls who, every week, have to perform certain songs that are selected by the makers of the program. This is done to see if the contestants are able to sing different genres of music, in turn displaying their versatility and determining if they are in fact truly talented. The contestants perform every week. After their performance they are critiqued by a panel of expert judges who inform the contestants of the positive and negative aspects of their individual performances. Each contestant is issued their own distinctive phone number which is shown to the public after their performance. They are used to vote for the contestant of the viewer's choice. With this method, the public decides who moves onto the next level of the program by calling the designated phone number of their favorite contestant. On the following show the three contestants with the fewest amounts of calls are grouped together, billed as the bottom three. The one with the fewest calls is the one that is sent home. This goes on for twelve weeks until the finale when it is down to the last two contestants. The winner receives a certain amount of money and a recording contract with a prominent recording company. Of course their lives change totally because of these things happening to them. Looking at it through the social conflict perspective, it is quite obvious that the initial conflict is the fact that this is a competition. These young people are competing against one another to reach their common goal of becoming America's idol. There is also conflict between the talented and non talented, male and female and recently in some viewers' opinions, a racial one as well. In this current season a few contestant s have been sent home, some think prematurely where others who have blatantly performed horribly have continued on. Last week one contestant, who to many has one of the most incredible voices on the show, was sent home because of lack of votes. She was one the bottom three which included two other outstanding