Losing David

[Photo courtesy of david-hq.org]
Last Friday, the remaining Idols were introduced to the world as standalone artists. As much as this was an awakening, a birth of the Idols from private to public, so it is for us television viewing fans. Before, they felt like our own – even if we were aware of the fact that there were others who “knew” and were “in” on the secret.

I’m not thirteen anymore, so I’ve seen many of my favorite celebrities come and go – rise to fame and lose it. It always starts out the same, and it’s always a painful process: raw talent, often combined with good-enough looks or a unique personality eventually snowballs into The Next Big Thing.

Maybe I’m not a typical fan, but this sudden thrust of my favorite entertainer is met with mixed feelings: do I want them to enjoy the fruits of their labor and run the risk of sex and drugs to go with their rock and roll, or do I want them to stay “my little secret”?

This has been the case from Day One with DArchuleta. Granted, things are a little different: he’s a contestant on one of the most-watched talent competitions on television, which would make him a celebrity regardless of his talent. I’m new to this “American Idol” sudden fame thing, but I am by no means new to the parasocial psychology behind television viewing.

The intimacy of our television sets is deceiving. Psychology has told us that we are prone to forging relationships with actors who appear regularly before us in the tube because we have, essentially, invited them into our homes. While we recognize that we share our likes with other people out there -- typically in cyberspace -- these people are nameless and faceless and do not exist in the realm of all things real.

However, it was the internet which gave us insight into our relationship with the "actors" last Friday. I don’t know how media outlets have approached past Homecomings, but this year, we were able to follow the Idols practically step-by-step for the whole of the trip home, which was exciting and completely disconcerting all at once. We were, in nearly every instance, allowed to watch as each of the Idols was made aware of how big their star has become – and concurrently, watch as they realized just as we were made to realize that they no longer belonged to themselves as much as they no longer belonged to just us. It’s a terrible Catch 22, really: the fans lost them to … the fans.

In the case of DArchuleta, this was ever the more apparent because of his seemingly inherent humility and innocence. In one day, from the 100 fans at the television station to his emotional reaction to the fans at The Gateway to, at last, the thousands upon thousands at both the Murray event and the Jazz and Lakers game, the sheer expedited growth in audience from place to place represented and reflected the compacted impact of the microcosmic “American Idol” stage. But as David broke down in tears and toughened up to the media and fame and pressure that comes with it, we felt him slip away – a little closer to the top and a little further away from us.

It was a sad moment, as this inevitable realization always is. He’s not “my” David anymore. He’s not even “our” David. He’s David Archuleta – in all its formal and impersonal glory. He belongs to the world now, and again.