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Chinese audiences take to 'Idol' phenomenon
'Super Girl,' a reality show, is modeled on American and British predecessors.
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By Gady A. Epstein
Sun Foreign Staff
Originally published May 22, 2005
CHANGSHA, China - Three young female singers, just weeks removed from anonymity, were standing onstage in front of a restive, noisy crowd of 1,000 people and a television audience of as many as 25 million more, all of them anxious to learn which singer had won the right to advance to the national finals.
Host Li Xiang - the Ryan Seacrest of China - set up the moment on one of the most popular entertainment shows on Chinese television today, seen at least once by 210 million people since it first aired early last year.
\"Next,\" said Li, 25, \"we will reveal the Changsha regional champion of the 2005 Mongolian Cow Sour Sour Yogurt Super Girl Voice!\"
Super Girl is not identical to American Idol, given that the Chinese show has sold its name to a dairy company, accepts only female contestants and has almost impenetrably complex rules for winnowing down contestants - which helps explain why last week's regional finale went on for three hours.
But the phenomenon is the same: The program has become a national spectacle. Now in its second season, Super Girl, modeled closely after American Idol and its British predecessor, Pop Idol, is the first nationally broadcast show of its kind in China, where the government owns all television stations and controls what goes on the air.
Unique in China
Change tends to come slowly to Chinese television, which serves as the most effective propaganda arm of the government, with a widely watched national nightly newscast and politically correct programming.
Sports and entertainment shows are not immune from political considerations: Propaganda officials seek content that casts the nation's favored stars and, of course, the government in a positive light; conversely, the handful of athletes or entertainers who fall out of favor with the government may find themselves suddenly invisible in prime time.
In this somewhat antiseptic environment, Super Girl has tapped a rich, previously unexploited interest in reality shows that portends more such shows to come, if state censors and government television executives decide to allow anything beyond a singing contest.
\"It is so close to the audience. It's a program that all people can get involved in, and before there was not such a program in the mainland,\" said An Youqi, 21, a native of remote northeastern China who won the inaugural season last year and has since recorded an album that sold more than 1 million copies. She returned to Super Girl to be a guest host on last week's show.
Super Girl has given every young girl in China - the daughters of farmers, migrant workers, coal miners or low-level government workers in far-flung provinces - a chance, however slim, of becoming a star. More than 100,000 women and girls, ages 4 to 89, will have competed by the time five cities have been host to regional competitions this year.
Different rules
Unlike in American Idol, where contestants from all around the United States end up competing against one another for the chance of being in a final field of 12, in Super Girl producers hold regional competitions. Each of this year's five regional winners automatically moves on to the national finals, and all of the regional second- and third-place finishers will compete again for a second chance to reach the finals.
Such complexity can be viewed as part of the show's charm.
Varying judges
In what is billed as a populist move, for example, the show also chooses 31 citizens reflecting different parts of society to serve as \"audience judges\" in each region.
They sit quietly on bleachers behind the three or four professional judges during the show, until called to the stage to help decide whom to eliminate from competition.
Some of these judges dress up in their finest for these telecasts, while others appear as if they've rushed to the show from cleaning house.
The professional judges, meanwhile, vary from region to region and don't have the distinct personalities of their American counterparts, though they do become minor celebrities.
Their remarks can have a distinctly Chinese flavor.
In the finale last week here in Changsha - the capital of Hunan province - one contestant dressed up like singer Avril Lavigne, with heavy blue eye shadow, a gothic-black faux corset top and lacy white skirt, and performed Lavigne's \"Take Me Away.\"
Judge Cang Yanbin, the record producer for last year's winner, was dismayed.
\"You chose another English song for the finale,\" Cang said to the contestant, Huang Jing, a college sophomore from Hunan. \"You should trust the charm of the mother tongue.\"
The Lavigne look-alike was eliminated for good by a 22-9 vote by the audience judges.
'I realized my dream'
The final three then sang songs chosen for them. In a twist, each woman had to pick one of the others to sing with and against, and they held hands as they competed against each other.
Finally, the text-message tallies for the three contestants were revealed - one digit at a time. The rowdy audience and the contestants' families and friends, who spent much of the three hours rattling noisemakers, blowing whistles or holding signs for their favored singers, cheered for every digit.
Zhao Jingyi, the daughter of a provincial-level police officer, received more than 100,000 text-message votes during the show to win easily.
She spoke afterward with modesty: \"Ever since I was a little girl,\" she said, \"I had a dream that I would stand on a stage and sing, and I realized my dream today.\" And she thanked her parents.
Contracts
Super Girl contestants are not promised recording contracts if they win, but last year's top three finishers have been signed to such deals. And third-place finisher Zhang Hanyun, a high school student from southwestern China's Sichuan province, became the face of the Mongolian Cow dairy's Sour Sour Yogurt that now sponsors the show.
Zhang, who turned 16 two months ago, pitches the yogurt on bus stop posters and national television commercials. Her first album is due out in July, and she is slated to star in a television drama based on her life.
She is also the subject of numerous Web postings, including some who say her cute-and-innocent image is a pretense for profit.
If so, she has a future in acting; she came to an interview at her record label's Beijing office last week in a school uniform, saying she had just taken exams at her boarding school nearby.
Before Super Girl came along, Zhang had been an \"ordinary girl,\" a daughter of government workers, but she had dreamed of being a star.
She admired Chinese pop singers but also Mariah Carey, though she didn't understand the lyrics of her songs.
\"As soon as I learned the concept of a star, I wanted to be one,\" she says.
Effect on other shows
What remains to be seen is whether Chinese television will give common people a chance to become stars in other ways, like America's quasi-celebrities spawned by shows like Survivor.
Hunan Satellite Television, famous in China for its entertainment programming, would be the logical place to start a Chinese Survivor.
But if it were up to Liao Ke, one of the program designers behind Super Girl, that wouldn't be the case. The 29-year-old, who has seen the show, said it may not be appropriate for China.
\"Whether such a program suits the situation of China, we still need more research,\" said Liao, who wore wire-rim glasses and spoke with a clinical remove that belied his youth.
\"The reality shows, they really like to exhibit the primitive nature of humanity, and they like to show a lot of the struggles between people. But as I grew up in Chinese culture, it's very hard for me to accept that. I still think TV should be responsible to the audience.\" |
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发表于 2005-5-24 22:39:10
