"Deutschland sucht den Superstar" the German version of "American Idol" faces a scandal that is interesting yet not surprising.
Starlounge.de reports of a former candidate Vidina Popic, that claims that nothing at "Superstar" is as it seems: "It's nothing more then a perfectly well prepared script", she claimes. According to her its not the jury that really decides who stays and who goes, but the producer decide that in an unofficial casting before the casting that millions get to watch on screen.
Further accusations have been for example the elimination of a candidate, because she did not want to wear a bikini. Whether that is true can be doubted, since there are girls that don't wear a bikini on the Maldives.
However it might be possible that later on after this scandals hit the media the producers decided not to put everyone in bikini's, as a proof that the candidates are not forced to wear one if they don't want to.
Unless more candidates come forth with similar accusations, it makes it hard to really decide whether its true or not, yet in the starlounge.de, 83% of the 46380 readers that voted chose, "its true the whole show is fake".
Well on one instance of course its fake, its a show and not a reality show that claims to show true occurrences. With that in mind it really is not such a heavy accusation. After all a magician also does not do real magic puts on a show to entertain us and amaze us. Moreover no one goes and blames the magician for faking magic.
One could go ahead accuse almost every show on TV with similar allegations, we the audience will never really know how close to reality the things are that we get to see and how much planning beforehand really goes on as well as, whether the telephone voting is calculated justly or if tricks are used.
The positive aspect about the complaints might have a positive effect on the audience, they make us reconsider things and help us to watch programs with a critical eye, this way it will become harder for producers to pull our legs.
At the end, the producers only make certain decisions, because we the audience want it that way. In this case it seems, the audience wants to see young talented girls in bikinis and participants that come across interesting.
Link to the article in German:
http://starlounge.unterhaltung.msn.de/index.cfm?objectid=107496
