Ama's, oh my...
Here are my thoughts: I think that historically, Adam did the right thing at the right time, gave the country a bit of a medicine that it urgently needed. But his career was not at a time or place where he could afford it. And so he paid for it. And I think that he did indeed pay and still does. Yes, it gained him some international exposure, but I think that if his first single and album had not had that sluggish start in the US, then a higher flying US career would have carried him internationally too. He would have gotten there on way or the other. The performance did alter his trajectory. But he had already enough REAL fans that carried him through that winter of 2009/10 and there were also a few famous folks who stood by him.
Barbara Walters had to stand up to her own network, I commend her for that, and it also showed me that it was possible to stand up to ABC management and that others who did not, just decided not to fight for him (i.e. Jimmy Kimmel, looking at you). Steven Spielberg did not cancel Adam's performance at his private party and that was very shortly after the Ama's. Then came Ellen, Jay Leno, and Adam's first live performance slot after the Ama's was actually given to him by Nigel Lithgoe. Many think that Nigel did not like Adam, but I have never understood where that came from, because Nigel actually gave him his next chance. Oprah was much later (February 2010) and only after it was clear that his career was on the amends. But her huge reach with a rather conservative audience at that and also her positive interview with Adam certainly helped, so it was all good.
As far as the medicine for the country, I believe that ultimately this is what will make this stand the test of time. The US was already moving forward on gay rights, but somehow the country thought that this battle could be won by pretending that gay was only 'Will and Grace' and if we introduced harmless gay characters and quasi asexual gay characters to America that eventually all would be nice and fine with gay rights, if we waited long enough and kept gay sex as quarantined as it was.
Adam came along and said (paraphrased). 'Gay sex is what it is, and I deny nothing and also deny myself nothing and YOU need to get over it, whatever it takes for you to get there'. And nobody had dared to ever demand that before him. And I am so proud of him for that. Everybody had accepted that notion that male-on-male sexuality was a taboo for the straight and therefore 'normal' society and gay was supposed to be ghetto'd accordingly. America would have stalled in its progress, if that wall of taboo had not come down. And Adam broke through it, demanding that mainstream America get over itself.
What happened in the following years is what always happens with any herd. Once that lead animal mades it through the gate, all the others follow. We have had male-on-male kisses on soaps at 10 am in the morning. Unthinkable before Adam. And we had that overall cultural flip from majority rejection to majority acceptance of homosexuality.
It is interesting though, that at least to this date, Adam has hardly anywhere been given credit for what he did. Not sure yet when that will come and how, but as somebody further up said. History usually gets it right in the end.
Now for me personally, the performance left me confused in many ways. Adam had until then always seemed in control, he had planned his idol path meticulously and had thought through details of audience perception, or the arch of his whole run on the show in ways that I had never seen in any other contestant. He had then performed on the idol tour and was supreme in handling both the sexual playfulness the audience engaged him in, as well as the media, as well as difficult situations (i.e. the sex toy projectile thrown at him). There was an instinctive ease with which he was able to handle it all. He even played the dominant guy really well on the idol tour, so I was not worried when he took on that character for the amas. I thought he knew how to play that role with his usual tongue in cheek kind of playful way.
Out comes at the Amas this guy who was playing more sleezy than dominant, seemed scary and violent and it looked so real, like he was not playing at all, and I realized that to those millions, who were not idol watchers, it must have been a shock, because Adam gave no indication that he was introducing a character and not introducing himself. And then all the stuff happened (fall, off pitch notes, frantic action, overly aggressive face on crotch as well as very 'let me eat your face' - kind of kiss and that finger and I just went ' wow', this did not go well and will hurt his career rather than bring in new fans and I was stunned. Not because of what happened, I was not shocked at the sexual acts, I was shocked, because I was missing that guy that was so smart, so measured in his judgement, the guy who could do everything with a wink or a smile, if needed. And I did not quite understand where that Adam from the previous 8 months had been all of a sudden.
I needed two things to reconcile this one for me, one was Adam's own explanation that it was too much adrenaline that made him go that far, and then this tape of his earlier rehearsal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qEF2PhKx2I that showed me how different it was intended to go down, and I realized that Adam in the spur of the moment had just acted and not realized how
much further out he had stepped from what had been planned and choreographed.
I realized over time that in spite of all his analytics, Adam was also a very emotional kind of person, somebody who could be fueled by what Out magazine had done to him, or what he perceived as an injustice towards gays, or more generally towards male performers, or what his fans said, or Gaga did, or whatever, and he could just act on it. Eventually, I learned to understand how much Adam was a very intense kind of person, whose intensity could blow up, even though we had never seen it until then. It is something he is capable of, and it just happened at that strange cross-point in time, where he was going to be severely misunderstood on a personal level, but yet have done something courageous and far reaching for the further development of the gay movement in the US.
Adam's path is a guided one, I am convinced of that. There is some strange destiny involved here, it is supposed to happen in the way it does. I may not understand all the pieces, but I do understand the overall picture. He is one brave fellow and he needs all the support ahe can get and I am sure he will achieve the longevity he is dreaming of, the success will keep building and he will leave behind a legacy for all that he stands for in the end. To be honest, I am more sure about that part of his career than I am about where he is ultimately headed musically. Because I do believe that those chapters have somehow not written themselves yet, to date.
