Coral Amber

I was watching Saturday morning cartoons and after Kim Possible I catch part of the JammXKids dance special, a group of multi-cultural kids dancing to promote... uh, moving (don't get me started on how much I hate the 'Verb, it's what you do' campaign).

I wonder if this stuff would be really impressive to me if I was their target audience of ten year olds. To me, it just seems that they are trying to hard to make something hip by creating a brand and throwing everything their trendsetters have seen on the street into it.

The kids are joined by a bevy of big name stars with G rated mass appeal: Shaq (does he still play professional basketball or does he spend his time doing this kind of thing and trying to forget the movie Kazaam?), Queen Latifa, Randy Jackson and JoJo (trying to bring kids to see her new movie, Aquamarine).

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Randy Jackson was hosting the entire thing. I used to try counting how many times he would say 'dog' in a single episode of American Idol. I guess once you do reality tv every other appearance is icing. Has he been on Hollywood squares yet?

Randy tells us that, not only do those kids sing and dance, they are real life superheroes. You see, they go around the country and wherever they find a K.I.T. (kid in trouble) they help them L2D (learn to dance). Because the only real problems a middle schooler has is not being cool enough to dance with their first crush. Right.

Their first victim is played by a child actor who is actually part of the team. They show their superpowers by helping the kid who CDWT (can't dance won't try) by invading his living room, showing him dance moves, and offering encouraging platitudes when he gets frustrated. Soon he's proficient enough in hip hop and "street" dancing (which I believe involves the elusive crunk I've heard about) to impress his lady fair at the school dance. His bully and dance rival sees these awesome dance moves and immediately says he's "out of here" without even challenging the kid to a dance off. If the target audience were a few years older, there would have been a dance off.

And in a move that proves to me that these types of things feed off of each other: the man who got famous by being annoying on the first run of 'Beauty and the Geek', Richard, is going to be on next week's show to learn how to dance.

Part of me wonders whether people do reality tv for the chance to win money or maybe fulfill their dreams or if it's just a hope that they will be memorable enough in some way to get their 15 minutes of fame stretched out. If you're not lucky enough to become a part of the entertainment biz at the age of our JammXKids then you have to try making it through this new genre of tv entertainment.

I mean, it worked for William Hung right? Of course he was a nice guy with lots of class and these new guys are trying to stand out in the worst possible way. The new issue of Rolling Stone did a story on the American idol rejects. I look at the guys who scored the most air time during the American Idol auditions. Loud, flashy, rude, and inappropriate, these hopefuls seem so offended that the judges cannot see their greatness they lash out.

So what's worse? Being in the industry and going overboard trying to make the next big thing or glorifying average people with below average talents? Both have goals of entertaining, but both also leave a kind of bad taste in my mouth. I guess eventually the JammXKids will grow up, move onto their next project, and become more serious actors or pop sensations. What will happen to the people who got their fifteen minutes of fame by being deluded or jerky or wildly inappropriate? I guess if I ever meet Richard, I will ask him.