Leta€™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.
a€?Oh, one last thing on todaya€™s agenda,a€? 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, a€?Our contingency plan for an Adam Lambert win on American Idol.a€?
a€?This is problematic,a€? 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. a€?What if hea€™s, you know, a political homo?a€?
a€?You mean like Rosie Oa€™Donnell political?a€?
a€?Yes.a€?
Mumbles of concern sprout down the table.
The marketing director sighs. a€?Gay marriage has been big this year. Lambert could stoke those flames into a firestorm, a firestorm that could singe our branding.a€?
A jockish executive who floated through his MBA at Arizona State laughs. a€?Flames, I get it. a€?Cause hea€™s a faggot.a€?
a€?Calm down Brett,a€? the director says. a€?Seriously. Will this mean Coca-Cola is endorsing gay marriage?a€?
The steely woman says, a€?Simon Cowell is contracted to sip from his twenty-ounce mug of Coke every three minutes; no one has complained about that.a€?
a€?For the last time, Cowell isna€™t gay,a€? the director moans, a€?he just likes V-necks and has a fetish for crew cuts.a€?
a€?But hea€™s so catty and Eurofaggy,a€? complains the woman. a€?It hasna€™t been good for our rural numbers.a€?
a€?Yeah,a€? Brett broods, boxy shoulders seizing, too-prominent brow furrowing, a€?think about those rural numbers if Lambert actually wins. Black eyeliner and nail polish, cock-sucking, fucking ass eatera€¦ over my dead Coke-chugging body.a€?
a€?Dr. Pepper is making huge inroads in the South,a€? the steely woman says. She taps her laptop and an ominous declining line graph flashes on the wall. a€?Our Georgia and Texas numbers are nosediving. It was bad enough our CEO went to Obamaa€™s inauguration, now wea€™re going to put a fucking Coke can in Lamberta€™s hand?a€?
a€?Wait,a€? starts a young nerdish intern who has been scribbling notes furiously the entire time. a€?I thought Coca-Cola was trying to progress. Thata€™s why we instituted a non-discrimination policy for gays.a€?
The rest of the table laugh riotously, even the old man at the head. After a stretched minute, they settle.
Brett wipes a tear. a€?Wow man. Most people dona€™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.a€?
A dawn of realization washes over the steely womana€™s face. a€?Wea€™ve got the power to have it both ways. We didna€™t build ourselves into the worlda€™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.a€?
a€?Even better!a€? pipes up the marketing director. a€?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!a€? The director weaves his fingers together like two bony rakes.
a€?He can do it with the Elvis hair he had Motown week!a€? the steely woman chimes rapidly.
a€?We can put it on YouTube!a€? Brett punches the air.
a€?Synergy!a€? the table cries like any normal person would cry a€?Eureka.a€?
The building then explodes. Everyone dies. Boom. Death.
But none of this a€?fictionala€? 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 TrA© 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. Ia€™d want you to win as yourself, emo bangs and nail-polish and all. Ia€™d want you to come down those flashing Seacrested stairs as a genderfuck Broadway showboy a€¦ because I know thata€™s what you want to be (Ia€™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 hea€™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). Ia€™ve been talking this whole time of gayness as an image thing (because thata€™s what this show is about), but he doesna€™t need it. He shouldna€™t need it.
That voice, if you close your eyes and listen carefully, is queer. Ita€™s showy, bombastic, nearly predictable in its theatrics, but therea€™s an earthy motherly lesbian wailing too. Ita€™s Cher and Rob Halford of Judas Priest and k.d. lang. Ita€™s pumped full of queer rage in the strains for equality in Michael Jacksona€™s Black and White, the melancholy trills of queer isolation in Tears For Fearsa€™ Mad World and the overstated rebel in Born to Be Wild.
Oh, Ia€™m sorry straight America, am I hijacking your cultural artifacts and turning them into something gay? Of course. We stole the rainbow. And now wea€™re going to take your Top 40. Deal with it. Thata€™s what this whole season has been about. Thata€™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 isna€™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
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