Will China's Next Pop Idol Be a "Happy Boy"?
Laura Robertson
CBN News
April 10, 2007
Move over American Idol! While this television phenomenon still continues to dominate American television ratings, its audience has nothing on its successful Chinese counterparts.
The "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest" also known as Super Girl, first captured the heart of China in 2005, with over 400 million watching Li Yuchun beat the thousands of other hopeful contestants. A similar audienced texted in their votes for last year's winner, Shang Wenjie, making the roughly 30 million American viewers who watched American Idol last week seem kind of inconsequential.
This type of commercial success has created similar hype around this May's birth of Super Girl's little brother: Happy Boy. But even though the show's sponsors and viewers are waiting in anticipation for the May 1st airdate, there's one major critic of the competition: the Chinese government.
Instead of embracing the reality-TV craze,
Wang Taihua, head of the State Authority of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) considers many of the over 500 reality TV shows in China to be "low-quality, low-brow entertainment only catering to the low end of the market." Rather than endulging this market, Happy Boy should present a "happy atmosphere" that benefits society.
Happy Boy's audience probably won't be seeing performances like
this one from the Li Yuchun, the original Super Girl. because officials only want "healthy and ethically inspiring songs."
This song from the first finale might get axed, too, because officials want to ensure that contestants'
"hairstyles, clothes, fashion accessories, language and manners should be in line with the mainstream values."
But this comment actually brings up the crux of the issue: what exactly constitutes "mainstream values?" Are they whatever the officials from SARFT deem appropriate, or what the audience wants?
It would seem that the the massive endorsement deals and popularity of the show would indicate that it does, in fact, represent "mainstream values," so it's a little perplexing that the government would be a better judge of those than the actual audience it represents. On the other hand, the current goal of the Chinese government is to create "a harmonious society," so should things that it considers antithetical to social harmony really be considered admirable values?
The ratings success of this season's competition will probably be the best judge of this classic battle between high values and mass culture. Of course, this show is only one small part of the much larger debate that isn't just limited to modern Chinese society. Just look on the news to see coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, Don Imus, or Britney Spears to see who has the edge in the U.S.
But whether or not the censors succeed in creating a "happy atmosphere," one certainty remains: the winner of the competition most certainly will be a Happy Boy.
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