how "the idol" upholds industry

how a show aimed at revealing the truth behind the entertainment industry exposed an exploitative twisted fantasy

rach

Aug 01, 2023

song to listen to while reading:

Master of None - Beach House (sampled in The Party & The After Party by The Weeknd)

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yes I made this graphic myself. yes I used canva. ignore troye sivan’s head.

Hey there,

wherever you are and wherever you might be,

I’ll be branching out a bit from my usual content this time and writing a piece on HBO Max’s “The Idol,” a highly talked about and equally controversial tv show with questionable themes and a contentious past.

I might be a little late to the party, but researching the show and different takes on it definitely took a lot of reading and watching! As well, this is an opinion, so it is written from the perspective of a 19-year-old Asian-Canadian cisgender female college student. With all opinion pieces, there might be parts you agree with and some you might not agree so much with. Feel free to leave a comment and I will try my best to respond to you. If you liked this post or resonated with it, I would love it if you left a heart (like) or subscribed to the newsletter so that you get material right in your inbox!

Hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it,

Rach

Note: I won’t focus so much on the plot, but more on the ideas and themes conveyed by the show and its creators and showrunners, mainly Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s character Tedros. With that said, I do have to include parts of the show for context and backstory, so there will be spoilers ahead. There is a part where I dissect the Levinson-directed show “Euphoria,” so a spoiler warning there. As well, there are mentions of intense abuse, sexual violence, sexual assault, and rape.

“The Idol” centers around Jocelyn (played by Lily-Rose Depp), a young pop star preparing for her comeback, while simultaneously reeling from her mother's death. From the get-go, her character draws visual parallels to the early days of stars such as Britney Spears (as mentioned in the first episode) and Madonna. Jocelyn eventually meets Tedros, a supposed cult leader who slowly begins to infiltrate her life.

As HBO’s official site puts it:

“After a nervous breakdown derailed Jocelyn’s (Lily-Rose Depp) last tour, she’s determined to claim her rightful status as the greatest and sexiest pop star in America. Her passions are reignited by Tedros (Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye), a nightclub impresario with a sordid past. Will her romantic awakening take her to glorious new heights or the deepest and darkest depths of her soul?”

If by reignited they meant graphic sex scenes that borderline on abuse, or romantic awakening as preying and eventually exploiting past trauma and vulnerability disguised as attraction, maybe they would have gotten the description closer to what actually happens in the show.

Here are a few things that I want to dwell on:

1. “The Idol” wasn’t actually supposed to be that bad.

The show, according to Levinson, is the brainchild of The Weeknd himself. In an interview with W Magazine, written by Lynn Hirschberg, it says that:

“Tesfaye had come up with the original premise for the show with his producing partner, Reza Fahim. “Abel came to us with a pitch,” Levinson told me. “He said something that I’ll always remember: ‘If I wanted to start a cult, I could.’ What he meant is that his fans were so loyal and devoted that they would follow him anywhere. That was the germ of the idea for The Idol: what happens when a pop star falls for the wrong guy and no one speaks up.”

Interesting.

Levinson, known for the critically acclaimed and highly accoladed “Euphoria,” as well as the movie “Assassination Nation” joined forces with Tesfaye and writer and producer Reza Fahim, to create “The Idol”.

Filmmaker and actress Amy Seimetz was set to direct and executive produce the project… until she wasn’t.

In April 2022, HBO released a statement to the online news site Deadline regarding “evolving” the creative vision of the show and “adjusting its cast and crew accordingly to best serve this new approach to the series,” not much later, the same website announced that Seimetz was leaving the project and that Levinson would have a bigger role, which would eventually be revealed as director.

Interestingly enough, in the W Magazine article, Seimetz is never mentioned, even though 80% of the material was shot with her behind the wheel. Laura Martin of Esquire delves into it here. Oh, what could have been.

With that said, Seimetz’s production was not perfect. Many cast and crew members reported that near the end of filming, chaos ensued and direction was unclear. Rolling Stone reported, “It’s really frustrating seeing Amy doing her damn best to turn around some kind of product of to HBO… and then [for HBO] to turn around and have Sam get essentially a blank check to turn it into ‘Euphoria Season Three with pop stars’ is extremely, extremely frustrating. “

It almost seems like the concept of “The Idol” was set up to fail. When Tesfaye pitched the show, it almost seemed like he wanted a biopic-style narrative about his life, his experiences, and his rise in the music industry. The road Seimetz was taking was the story of a troubled child star turned pop princess who ultimately became undone due to the unrealistic pressures of fame, society, and patriarchy.

You see how that differs?

What makes it worse, is that the show was originally meant to be a satirical representation of what the music and entertainment industry is like. As reported in an article by Rachel Handler for Vulture:

“What I signed up for was a dark satire of fame and the fame model in the 21st century. The things that we subject our talent and stars to, the forces that put people in the spotlight and how that can be manipulated in the post-Trump world,” explained one crew member.

“It went from satire to the thing it was satirizing.”

It almost seems like Levinson and Tesfaye wanted to break down genre boundaries using a show like “The Idol,” and instead, they simultaneously reinforced the real-life narrative that too often happens to young, rising, female popstars, that is; exploiting vulnerability and sometimes naivety with the promise that they’ll “make it big” if they reinvent themselves and their image.

A major concern among the crew, according to four production sources, was Levinson chipping away at the show’s original messaging, creating a distorted and jarring story that lost its overall impact. -Rolling Stone’s Cheyenne Roundtree

In my opinion, if HBO did not want a multi-million dollar unnecessary revamp, the Weeknd should have been the center character. With “The Idol,” a possible route could have been making a feature about the backstage or behind the scenes on the Weeknd’s actual tour, blended with anecdotes and snapshots of his personal life, much how like documentaries about Taylor Swift are made. Another possible direction could have been sticking to a comedic, thought-provoking, almost existential sort of vibe, a la Greta Gerwig’s Barbie or HBO’s own “White Lotus,” as mentioned in a video on the show by YouTuber, fashionista, and the most real person on Twitter, Mina Le.

The latter might have been better received, or at least more compelling to audiences. A biopic about the Weeknd? Maybe, but “a delve into the world of the entertainment industry and how large companies and executives manipulate and exploit young artists through the late-stage capitalism in the disguise of fame and fortune while navigating personal issues, legal battles, and demanding agents?” Sure I’ll watch!

At the same time, the media industry is a never-ending cycle. Someone already established will find an undiscovered artist or actor, and they’ll get their “big break” and rise to fame but only if they sign a contract, be bombarded with controversies and news about them (truth or not) released every waking moment, they gain sympathy through their label, company, agent, or an exposé, or they get outed or cancelled, a film, tv show, music video, or any other type of media is made inspired or told based on their life, and we exploit the very thing that they were being exploited for in the first place. We invest in the very thing we want to destroy.

2. The dialogue and scenes between Jocelyn and Tedros and the portrayal of a toxic relationship are more detrimental than entertaining and revealed a lot about Levinson’s character.

Apparently, the show was overhauled to reduce the “female perspective” in the narrative, which is quite upsetting considering the show's main character is a woman. The view of Jocelyn as an objectified sex symbol, and eventually the master manipulator behind the story, parallels Levinson’s treatment of female characters in “Euphoria.”

Jocelyn is almost the love child of two of the characters from “Euphoria,” Maddy, played by Alexa Demie (who actually made a cameo in “The Idol”,) and Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney. Both Maddy and Cassie, formerly best friends and eventually at odds with one another, fall for the same guy (played by Jacob Elordi), who subjects them to acts of abuse, violence, and harassment. Although “Euphoria” is a drama, there are moments when you watch all the violence and nudity and think “Isn’t this a little excessive, especially for a show about teenagers?” You could say that for a lot of other shows, but Sam Levinson’s trademark seems to be exactly that.

By redoing the whole thing just because there was “too much of a feminist lens,” all autonomy for women, especially for Jocelyn, is taken away, and the idea that women only succeed in the entertainment world because of the aid of men becomes the focus, which in turn is part of the problem that the Weeknd was trying to address in the first place. It is almost hilariously paradoxical, what ideas are actually promoted and conveyed to the audience. For a moment, you think the script is going to show how messed up, complex, and misogynistic society and the music industry is going to be, and what happens instead is the total opposite.

In particular, there is a plotline that involves a hairbrush.

3. Turning trauma into the basis for Jocelyn’s deepest “desires” is not a good look.

In the show, Jocelyn suffers a psychotic breakdown, partly due to the death of her mother, who abused her. In episode 3, it is revealed that a hairbrush was her mother’s tool of choice. Tedros then asks her to get the same exact hairbrush out and begins to beat her with it in front of most of their inner circle.

His ensuing dialogue is enough to make me throw up in my mouth and get full-body disturbed/disgusted shivers.

"All that trauma, you've got to turn it into inspiration,"

“You've got to tap into it. You're going to feel it. You're going to face it. You're going to remember it. You're going to let it wash all over."

“This is really going to hurt"

"But if you push through the pain, it'll be beautiful."

Without context, this sounds like exactly something that my therapist would say.

In the context of the scene, Tedros is trying to somehow channel her trauma into some kind of creative juice by inflicting even more trauma.

The theme of Jocelyn regarding her new abuser as a saviour is disguised as a toxic love story where she starts to appreciate his mistreatment of her, going as far as to thank him and profess her love for him. The same issues are prevalent in “Euphoria” where Maddy gets pushed against a bus and choked so hard it leaves bruises, but admits that no matter what Nate (Jacob Elordi’s character) does to her, she’ll still love him. He even goes as far as holding a gun to her head in Season 2. With Cassie, Nate subjects her to emotional and verbal assault, and she still interprets his actions as love due to her complicated relationship with her father.

I can see a little bit of how Levinson wants to touch on how hard it is to get out of or escape a relationship with domestic abuse, but in “Euphoria” it is almost like Nate’s behaviour is justified or normalized due to his past. As well, there are a few studies on how repressed traumatic situations might lead to sexual preferences, but with the way Levinson and Tesfaye portray it in “The Idol,” Jocelyn’s trauma exists as an excuse for Tedros to get away with abuse and sex in the form of cathartic release or creative reinvention.

In the finale of the show, it is shown that Jocelyn’s hairbrush is actually new, so it seems like she lied the whole time about her mother’s abuse, or her mother did still abuse her, but not with the hairbrush at all. By revealing Jocelyn as the manipulator the whole time, not Tedros, it seems like Levinson, Fahim, and the showrunners wanted to give agency back to Jocelyn as she basically outsmarts Tesfaye’s character.

At the end, Depp’s character brings Tedros on stage (during one of Tesfaye’s real-life concerts) and professes him as "the love of [her] life." She also says "You're mine forever. Now go stand over there," insinuating that she “won” in the end, and all the abuse he inflicted on her was completely forgotten. Levinson doesn’t empower women through these scenes, he actually takes away their power and agency by romanticizing traumatic situations that explain their behaviour, and treating relationships and bodily ownership as a game to be “taken” or “given”.

There is a scene where Tedros is described as “rapey” and Jocelyn reinforces that is one of the reasons she likes him. As well, multiple sources report that some scenes did not come to fruition such as where Jocelyn asks Tedros to beat her more after punching her in the face, giving him an erection, and for “[Lily-Rose] Depp to carry an egg in her vagina and if she dropped or cracked the egg, Tesfaye’s character would refuse to “rape” her - which sent Depp’s character into a spiral, begging him to rape her because she believed he was the key to her success.” Apparently, the scene was scrapped because there was no way to film it besides putting an actual egg up Depp’s vagina, not because Levinson did not see anything wrong with it (he wrote it). There were many cast and crew members who recognized the scenes were off-putting, and many of them left when Seimetz did.

As one cast member put it:

“It [‘The Idol’] was a show about a woman who was finding herself sexually, turned into a show about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it.”

I am reminded of Jessica Chastain’s tweet regarding Sansa Stark’s rape scene (Game of Thrones, coincidentally also HBO), where she says:

“Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger.”

So often, rape, sexual assault, harassment, abortion, and uncomfortable situations are used in mainstream media to provide character development or a “new sense of being,” and often the trauma or severity of the situation is ignored in favour of dramatic effect. When approaching difficult topics like these, media decides there is only time for one aspect, such as the feeling of anger or revenge against the perpetrator, or the anxiety and fear that comes with abuse and assault. In “The Idol” the main takeaway from Jocelyn’s abuse is instead her attraction to Tedros, and how this newfound attention turns dangerous.

Sex, in both “Euphoria” and “The Idol” serves as a plot device, and through Charlie Squire’s “Everyone Is Grotesque and No One Is Turned On”, I discovered Ira Beare’s “not only will i stare”, a delve into the rape-revenge trope in cinema, and their thoughts as a survivor.

“Ultimately I think that this project is not about defining “good” and “bad” or “exploitative” and “ethical” rape media but rather about taking a broad view of both the possibilities in and issues with representing rape, negotiating ethics and affection. Is it because rape is discursively constructed that it resists representation? To have an experience constantly re-codified and talked through and around in the way that rape is and has been makes it very difficult to look at it directly. To have said experience be one that is desired and fetishized means that looking at it directly becomes suspect, perverted.” - Ira Beare, “not only will i stare”

Since sexual assault and abuse are so different and complex based on personal experiences, there is going to be no “right” way to encapsulate the repercussions and ramifications of an event or unwanted interaction. One show I do think took a sensitive approach was “Sex Education,” where a character gets assaulted on the bus. They were able to include how much support it takes to navigate sexual harassment and assault, and how complex the fight for justice can be. The stigma around what sexual assault looks like is also not discussed in the media, and we often forget that it can take more than one form.

Consent in “The Idol” is iffy, and magazines describing it as “twisted torture porn” is not far off. Where internet and online media sites get it wrong though, is pointing out the absurdity or hilarity of the bad acting and dialogue in the scenes, instead of questioning the actual interactions. Yes, the Weeknd’s lines and face (especially with that rat tail hair), might be funny, but if you watched the entire show, I’m sure you wouldn’t be laughing that much. Is this all his fault?

4. Is the problem The Weeknd himself?

With any celebrity or public figure coming under scrutiny, there is always the prospect of “cancelling” or “boycotting.” In this situation, I do not think cancelling Tesfaye himself contributes to breaking down the capitalistic and industrial objectification of women, and sources say that “although Tesfaye is credited as co-creator and a writer, three crew members with knowledge of the situation claim he barely touched a script during the reshoots.”

It seems like in this case Tesfaye and Depp were the puppets and Levinson and the writers/showrunners were the puppeteers. The Weeknd is no stranger to sex and intimacy, as a lot of his songs center around the topic, as do a lot of songs these days. There is nothing wrong with that, but I encourage you to pay attention to what you consume, as with all things.

I still do listen to The Weeknd, and though I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore fan, I won’t lie and say his music is terrible. Where his music and “The Idol” differs, is that with most of the music, he has control over the messages, and with the show, it seemed like Levinson gave him power, but in the end used him as a way to deliver, not to orchestrate. We do have some responsibility to keep both of them accountable, and whatever form that takes, can be explored.

5. All attention is good attention. (Coined by Substack writer BDM)

You can find at least a hundred tiktoks, articles, exposés, blog posts, and essays like mine on “The Idol,” which mostly is contributed to how problematic it is. The thing is, that is exactly what HBO and Levinson want. The more attention, good or bad, means that more people will be interested and hear about the show, and in turn, watch it to see how bad it actually is. No matter what the reason, it is still a view, and that translates to a dollar in HBO’s pocket. (I do not know much about how the WGA Writer’s strike and SAG-AFTRA strike influenced production specifically on “The Idol,” and hence did not write on that much.)

As mentioned in the Rolling Stone article:

“There is no point. They’re just trying to see how much of a reaction they can get.”

So, is writing about this contributing to the problem itself?

With anything you write concerning media, entertainment, and industry, there are going to be intricacies to the system that have to be recognized and addressed. I had this prompt idea not because I wanted to tell you how horrible “The Idol” is and why you shouldn’t watch it (okay maybe just a little bit), but because I was so tired of how Sam Levinson and men like him treat women in their projects and are seen as visionaries.

He is not the only one.

The problem is not men themselves, as a lot of anti-feminist and conservative pundits are mentioning. The problem is the systemic societal construct that gives people (no matter how they identify) like Sam Levinson the opportunity to produce and direct projects that are ultimately harming others, especially young women, without anyone blinking their eyes. By letting him go off the hook, we ignore the overall messages within “The Idol” and the narratives of characters like Jocelyn, Cassie, and Maddy that translate to stories in real life, further distancing reality from our perception of the escapism that is entertainment.

how "the idol" upholds industry

how a show aimed at revealing the truth behind the entertainment industry exposed an exploitative twisted fantasy

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