American Idol. America’s Top Model. The Apprentice. The Bachelor. Survivor. The Biggest Loser. Ah, now there’s a double entendre!

We have met the losers, and they are us!

Over the past three decades (beginning with the 1970s reject, "The Gong Show,") audiences have been “treated” to dozens of mega-hyped “artists” — most of them phony, scripted, talent-challenged, and insulting to paying listeners and spectators who are either too unschooled (or maybe just too tired) to notice, given the frenetic pace and long commutes now endemic to our society.

But the recent outpouring upon the death of pop icon Michael Jackson brings another dimension to the debate.

Clearly, Michael Jackson was appreciated by countless young people, and no doubt he possessed some degree of talent, had it been channeled and nurtured. But “talent” today is confused with “presence.” Like Britney Spears, what Michael Jackson actually had most was “stage presence.” 

A truly superior voice (or proficiency with a musical instrument, for that matter) is distinguished first by its uniqueness. If a song (or a musical score) no one has heard before is played over the airwaves, the listening audience ought to be able to recognize the voice (or instrumentalist) instantaneously. That is uniqueness. This is true even when the artist in question lacks “perfect pitch” — Maurice Chevalier, Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong come to mind as decidedly lacking in that area, yet they were, and continue to be, instantly recognizable. And all three could make any song a winner, hands down.

The same is true if a musical piece is not quite orchestral quality — as in the late Jack Benny’s signature violin spoof (“The Kreutzer Etude”) — and Welsh prodigy, Máiréad Nesbitt, the fiddler/dancer/violinist of Riverdance and Celtic Woman fame who somehow manages to play her chosen instrument nearly flawlessly and perform a difficult dance number at the same time. Ageless favorites like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Frankie Avalon, Roy Orbison, Sammy Davis, Jr., Barbra Streisand and Michael Feinstein are additional examples of styles so unique that once a person has heard them, they recognize the singer whether they actually see the person or not.  No introduction is necessary.

Extraordinary talent (as opposed to “style”) is distinguished by perfect pitch (a comparable expression, “perfect ear,” exists in music) as well as by the ability to express a piece in such a way as to “touch” an audience. Examples include Italian tenor Andrea Boccelli, American opera icon Denyce Graves, folk singer Joan Baez (politics notwithstanding), actress/Broadway singer Patti LuPone and, more recently, Great Britain’s Susan Boyles. If you watch their performances you will notice something unusual: None make use of hand movements, or even much in the way of facial expressions, which is rather a departure from the norm. Why? Quite simply, they don’t need to.

In the dance department, neither Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk” nor Britney Spears’ gyrations approach in any way the precision and complexity of real dance artists like Ben Vereen, Michael Flatley, the late Sammy Davis, Jr., Bob Fosse, Gwen Verdon, Ginger Rogers, Lisa Minnelli or Ann Miller, much less modern greats like the Riverdance ensemble and its spinoffs.

Over the past couple of decades, what has been marketed to the masses have been primarily “acts,” not performances in the true sense of the word. Jumpstarted via modern technology — psychedelics, pyrotechnics, etc. — professional handlers and managers discovered they could deflect audiences from the fact that their “stars” had little actual talent and rake in a fortune. More sinister, however, is the discovery that such techniques could whip up a frenzy among younger audiences — the old “mob psychology” run amok. If old newsreels show fans of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley swooning and screaming with delight, it is nothing compared to the addled agitation among youth audiences of today, many of whom use Woodstock-inspired recreational drugs to augment the “entertainment experience.”

Thus, the emergence of the term “celebrity packaging,” coined to describe substance-less shows and routines which are almost entirely dependent upon the skills of marketing-managers. They use psycho-demographic surveying, mainly among youth, to gear their human “product” to the “lowest common denominator” — which is to say, to the great untaught masses.

The fact is, most schools today do not teach any culture, much less Western culture. Elementary and secondary school students do not, and have not for a long time, partaken of daily (or even weekly) lessons in music, painting, dance and all the things that even public schools once taught.  In looking over vintage yearbooks from the late 1930s-1950s recently, a lot more than something called “band” apparently was a regular feature of the curriculum. An entire elementary student body in Maryland, Virginia and Indiana would, for example, gather in a large room on a regular basis to sing to staples of Americana and memorize British and Scottish folk tunes. Pupils learned to recognize the difference between a Monet painting and a Renoir; there were small violin ensembles, piano recitals and so forth. In some states, students graduated knowing the difference between Tudor, Victorian and Georgian-style mansions; between ancient Greek and Roman buildings. They learned to recognize Baroque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical architectures.

So, when we talk about “packaged artists” today, it comes down to a pejorative of sorts, meaning that the handler or manager in question “grooms” his charge in such a way as to be as outrageous as possible, even going so far as to plant occasional false stories in tabloids that receive wide dissemination. Unsurprisingly, the “star” in question, often being naïve and narcissistic, will begin to believe their own hype. Some “go off the deep end,” their real “drug” not being painkillers or tranquilizers or even bizarre cosmetic surgery, but the narcotic of nonstop recognition and privilege.

It’s too bad that Michael Jackson’s stage presence and physical flexibility, like Britney Spears’, could not have been harnessed in a more positive way. As it was even Elvis Presley would have been reluctant to duplicate Michael’s on-stage (and off-stage) persona; although, unbeknownst to the then-young and innocent singer of tender love songs and gospel music, the suggestive and risqué movements encouraged by his “handler” (“Colonel” Tom Parker) was the opening salvo that foreshadowed today’s gross-out performances. Looking at Elvis’ old clips now, one detects a certain self-deprecation, as if it is all in jest; that he is, in fact, laughing at himself. 

Whether or not older generations liked Presley’s style or music, one thing they all grudgingly agreed on was that “Elvis the Pelvis” did have an on-key, memorable voice. Sadly, today's "entertainers" are more pop and pizazz than style and substance.


Beverly K. Eakman is the daughter of the late Jan Tomasow, former concert master of the National Symphony Orchestra, who toured the world as a child prodigy.  Her mother, Evelyn Sprow, was a talented violinist and pianist.  Mrs. Eakman recently retired from the Justice Dept., is a lecturer and the author of four books (two award-winners) on education, privacy, culture, mental health and illicit data-trafficking. She can be reached through her website:  www.BeverlyE.com.