Week 12: K3 zoekt K3

Superficiality for the win

An analysis of the tv show K3 zoekt K3

A few weeks ago, on the 6th of November, the proud winners of the talent show K3 zoekt K3 were announced.  From now on Marthe, Klaasje and Hanne are going to fill the footsteps of Karen, Kristel and Josje to continue under the name ‘K3’.  K3 zoekt K3 is not the first talent show about the famous dancing, singing and acting trio. A few years ago one of the original members, Kathleen, was replaced by Josje in another fierce competition under the name ‘K2 zoekt K3’. After the ending of the show, the trio continued their career paths as if nothing had changed. They replaced one blonde with the other and went about their business for a couple of years. K3 was still K3, the only thing that was different was the name of the blonde one. Not long after the inauguration of Josje, the trio decided to call it quits all together and it was time for a new generation to set the stage. Even though the replacing of singers within bands is far from exceptional, we find it highly problematic to maintain the name of the group when ALL of the original members have been replaced. 

In many ways, the talent show K3 zoekt K3 is a typical talent show from the Idols mold. According to Challaby, Idols is one of four super-formats that broke new ground in terms of originality, world domination and cash generation in the format exchange. Even though the genre of the talent show is much older, it was only after the premiering of Pop Idol on ITV in the UK in October 2001 that a talent show format travelled all over the world. By autumn 2008, 41 licenses had been sold, two of them, in the Middle East and Latin America, covering 50 territories between them. The US version, American Idol, has sold in over 180 countries to date. (Challaby 2011: 301)
After firstly being adapted in the USA by Fox, the Pop Idol format opened up a new period for the format trade. The shift was profound and radically altered the structure, scope and pace of the international format flow. The so called ‘skeleton’ of the show (the basic structure) became a global phenomenon and this is something we nowadays still recognize in shows like K3 zoekt K3. The contestants are being judged by ‘professionals’ from the business, the audience can vote for their favorites creating an illusion of a democratized show, and the emotional journey of the girls is followed closely.

However there are also characteristics that set K3 zoekt K3 apart from other talent shows. Something crucial that we’ve already mentioned before is that the winners of the show are essentially auditioning for a part in a group that is already established. The show uses a talent show format, but it differs from the conventional one because they search for replacements of already existing personas. In this sense K3 zoekt K3 is more in line with talent shows in search of musical stars, like Op zoek naar Evita for example. They are not searching for a new ‘autonomous’ star. On the contrary: they are searching for three girls who fit the K3 mold and who can replace the current members without much difficulties. 

In practice this means that they want three young girls who can sing, dance and act, and have differing hair colours, all other individual characteristics are irrelevant. To prove our point we refer to one of the final episodes before the finale. Some of the girls had to dye their hair and compete against other girls within the same ‘group’ of hair colour. The blondes had to compete against the blondes, the brunettes against the brunettes and so on. This means that instead of their vocal qualities, their appearance had priority in the search of the new K3. If the three best candidates just happened to be red heads, though luck, they would not make the cut simply because of their hair colour. We feel that this takes the already heavily criticized superficiality of talent shows to a whole new level.

The finalists in anticipation of the moment to reveal their hair colour

The idea that talent shows breed superficiality is something Meizel conceptualizes in his book: Idolized: music, media, and identity in American idol. As he puts it: ‘Idols emphasizes the visual aspect of popular music, and ‘pop’ in particular – that is the ‘image’. This has led to the frequent discussion of physical appearance.’ Meizel (2012: 206)

Another theorist who is interested in ‘the image’ as a phenomenon is Appadurai. For him, the globalized economy comprises a set of five interconnected but subjunctive dimensions. One of them is particularly interesting in lights of this case study. When describing ‘landscapes of images’, Appadurai makes a distinction between mediascapes and ideoscapes. He notes that ‘mediascapes are ‘image-centered, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality’, whereas the images of ideoscapes involve political ideologies and counter-ideologies.’ The multiple mediascapes of talent shows produce diverse images, narratives, and metaphors upon which imagined lives and imagined worlds are constructed. (Meizel 2012: 209)

We feel that the narrative that K3 zoekt K3 produces is clear. If you win the show, you are catapulted into ‘instant success’. There is no need to build a repertoire for yourself because all the decisions have already been made for you, as well as the songs that have already been written, the shows that have already been booked and the choreography that is already decided on. This might have been the case in other talent shows as well to some extent, but K3 zoekt K3 takes this to a whole new level. We conclude that carelessly replacing ALL the members of the group implies that the identity of the girls is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who won the contest in the end, because they will surely be K3, whatever that may mean.

AH-MW-MS-GV-SH

Thesis
Replacing all the members of a group inevitably means to change the essence of the group in question.

Bibliography:

Chalaby, J. K. (2011). The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV format trade became a global industry. European Journal of Communication,26(4).

Meizel, K. (2011). Idolized: music, media, and identity in American idol. Indiana University Press.