William Cheng

Staging Overcoming: Narratives of Disability and Meritocracy in Reality Singing Competitions

With the American Dream seizing center stage, reality television competitions often feature disabled auditionees and their moving tales of overcoming adversity. Musical—and frequently singing—abilities potentially normalize and envoice contestants while silencing vital conversations about the exploitation, stigmatization, and corporate politics at work in these seductive narratives. How do chronicles of overcoming overcome consumers? And how might inspiration porn about disability disable beholders’ emotional, intellectual, and rhetorical faculties? As fans and scholars resist or succumb to the tearfulness induced by sentimental stories, they must chart tricky routes through the heady skepticism of Scylla and the naı̈ve waterworks of Charybdis. With head held high, a twenty-one-year-old man strides into a room and sees four celebrity judges. Identifying himself as a Cuban immigrant living in Florida, he speaks with a stutter—haltingly, laboriously, unsteadily. But as he goes on to sing, he does so fluidly and effortlessly and confidently. The judges compliment his beautiful voice and positive vibe. A couple of them even tell him that he should just sing all the time. As grateful tears stream down this auditionee’s face, a resounding quartet of yeses sends him through to the next round of the competition. With assistance, a twenty-six-year-old woman walks cautiously onto a large stage. She does not identify herself to four judges who are, for the moment, turned away from her. Hearing her musical cue, the woman sings marvelously, winning applause from the studio audience. After the performance, she tells the judges—who have since swiveled around in their chairs to face her—that she cannot see them due to her glaucoma. One judge asks her why she has chosen to try out for the show. She says she was attracted to its format: how the judges initially could not see her, just as she could not (and still cannot) see them. Her response elicits delighted chuckles from the judges and audience members. A double-blind audition, a rare promise of parity . . . maybe. With uneven gait, a man of unknown age makes his way into a gigantic auditorium to greet four judges and an audience of hundreds. His limbs appear unusual in length and form. When asked how old he is, he replies that he is not sure: as a child, he was rescued from an Iraqi orphanage by a woman who became his adoptive mother. As he sings, his performance draws cheers and tears. Afterward, one judge commends this contestant for his courage. Another judge says he won her over as I wish to thank Michael Beckerman, Andrew Dell’Antonio, Scott DeVeaux, Phil Ford, Blake Howe, Jennifer Iverson, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Jeannette Di Bernardo Jones, Neil Lerner, Anabel Maler, Katherine Meizel, Joseph Straus, and this journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Excerpts from this paper were presented at the 2014 meeting of the American Musicological Society (Milwaukee, WI), the 2014 meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (Pittsburgh, PA), and the 2015 meeting of the Society for American Music (Sacramento, CA).

Taking Back the Laugh: Comedic Alibis, Funny Fails

Eighteen days after 11 September 2001, a new season of Saturday Night Live premiered on schedule, making big headlines given how most other television programs were getting replaced by round-the-clock news coverage. The NFL and MLB called off games, the Emmys were doubly postponed, Rockstar delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto III (set in a fictionalized New York City), and Disney’s parks closed their doors. Entertainment across the United States—sitcoms, sports, rollercoasters— screeched to a halt, ground to zero. For SNL producer Lorne Michaels to reboot his laugh factory was saying something. Specifically, Michaels wanted the host Reese Witherspoon to say “fucking.” He told her to work the word into the opening monologue’s punchline, declaring he would happily pay whatever Federal Communications