By Patrick McKegney
I love Dancing with the Stars. I can’t get enough of it. Every
Monday night at 8 pm I watch semi-celebrities attempt difficult
ballroom dances to 90’s pop hits. What more can I ask for? After the
show I grab my iPhone (naturally equipped with the DWTS application)
and cast my vote for my favorite star. And when Tuesday night rolls
around I’m back in front of my TV, waiting with baited breath as Tom
Bergeron announces the castoff for that week.
I’m not alone here. Over 20 million people watched the DWTS premiere
in March, and millions of votes will be cast for the finals this Monday.
If you aren’t familiar with the show, allow me to give you this very
abbreviated overview: celebrities are paired with a professional
dancer who teaches them a new dance each week. The celebrities then
perform the routine on Monday night in front of a live studio audience
(and those 20 million viewers I mentioned). Three judges individually
score the dance from 1-10 based on technical skill, performance and
other professionally based standards. Those scores are then combined
with viewer votes to see who moves on to the next round.
But what are these viewer votes based on? It’s a dancing show, so
naturally some people vote for the best dancer. But that certainly
isn’t the only standard.
Viewers like me also vote for their favorite celebrities. I typically
cast my vote for whichever celebrity I think is the most entertaining
and charismatic to watch each week. As a viewer, I am shown
interviews with the celebrities and video clips of their week of
practice. By the end of an episode you feel like you know the
competitors on a personal level, and their back-story becomes as
fundamental a part of your decision as their ability to Samba.
When viewers eventually cast their votes to decide the fate of a
celebrity, they do so with a full picture analysis of the performer.
This is crucial – very often on DWTS (and American Idol, for that
matter) the popular will beat the talented.
If Dancing with the Stars understands the importance of back-story
when making an important decision, why do our court systems seem to
fail in that regard? Our courts are constantly concerned with
frontage and the material aspects of a case, often at the expense of
any internal back-story presented to a juror. However, the DWTS voter
understands that how an individual presents himself on their day in
court (or ballroom) is only one dimension of their situation. In the
eyes of the voter, the celebrity’s story is indispensible to reaching
the correct result. While an idiosyncratic performer thrives on
Dancing with the Stars by standing out from their peers, this same
individual will fail horribly in the eyes of the law. The legal
system forces these emotionally complex individuals into standardized
categories, unable to comprehend those who are strange or different.
Dancing with the Stars voters are presented with the entire field of
information for their consideration in order to decide who should win
a reality television program. If only jurors were given the same
opportunity when casting votes in a courtroom.
