American Idol Contestant Meets with Early End
by Charles Jay
Pop Culture/Entertainment betting
IN DEATH, ALEXIS COHEN IS FAMOUS AGAIN
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Alexis Cohen was one of the more controversial contestants who ever appeared on Fox's mega-hit "American Idol." Notably, in Season 7 she laced into judges with obscenities after she was booted during the audition process.
Naturally, that made her a YouTube and cult sensation, at least on a temporary basis.
She was actually at it again just a month or so ago, awaiting word in whether she would be invited back to the next round of the process. You had to admire her pluck, as well as her defiant attitude. "I march to the beat of a different drummer," she said when interviewed before the Season 7 audition. That was evident, and in fact exploited by the show's producers.
She marched into some fatal trouble this past weekend.
On Saturday morning, Alexis Cohen, who was from Allentown, PA, was killed in Seaside Heights, a town on the Jersey Shore, by a hit-and-run driver. On Sunday night the driver was identified as Daniel Bark, a clerk at a grocery store, who was charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident.
Events have taken an even more bizarre turn since then. Bark is extremely despondent about what happened, at least according to his attorney, and he has been placed on suicide watch as he is in the Ocean County (NJ) Jail. Additional charges have come Bark's way, which include aggravated manslaughter and vehicular homicide.
The tweets have started to come:
Paula Abdul -- "My heart goes out to the family of Alexis Cohen. She showed great courage at 'Idol' and let's all send our prayers to her family now."
Ryan Seacrest -- "My thoughts are with the Cohen family. It is such a sad story. She auditioned for the producers for this season and then the terrible news."
Cohen's initial audition was not successful, and though the judges did not totally blow her off, suggesting even that she might find some happiness in a 60's cover band, Simon Cowell implied that she was a Willem Dafoe-lookalike (referencing his "Green Goblin" character from Spider Man) after she left the room. She also went off on the judges, in a tirade that seemed in part somewhat embroidered and in part natural - frighteningly so.
At the time of her first American Idol audition, Alexis Cohen lived in a studio apartment with her mother and a couple of cats, occupying about 300 square feet. You could tell where the motivation came from. I don't know that this is an appropriate place to launch into a speech about the price some people will pay for fame, because as far as any of us knows, that had nothing at all to do with Cohen's tragic death.
However, I can certainly tell you that last year's American Idol-related tragedy had nearly EVERYTHING to do with it.
Paula Goodspeed, who was consumed by dreams of stardom and obsessed with Paula Abdul, used all of that, hidden not a bit, to get on the show, and while the producers were all too willing because it made for "good TV," it resulted in a bad ending. She was utterly without talent, but not without the determination to make a mark. After being booted, she said "It's not over."
It wasn't.
She stalked Abdul, sending messages, making phone calls and paying uninvited visits to Abdul, drawing the attention of the stalkers' unit at the police department. She was later found dead of an overdose in her car, parked right near Abdul's home in Sherman Oaks, CA. She had sent Abdul flowers the day before her suicide.
Whether Alexis Cohen's quirkiness came with the specific intent of penetrating the viral mechanisms that bring about pop culture notoriety is something I don't know enough about, because I don't watch a lot of American Idol. Unfortunately, she will never be able to wax philosophically about it.
But judging from some of the online tributes and vigils I'm seeing, she's unquestionably had her "celebrity" revived, in the only way it is possible for so many people.
Yes, that's tragic in and of itself, but that's the way ersatz show business (i.e., reality culture as we know it) usually plays itself out.
She was never going to get there one way, so she got there another way.
Again though, for about fifteen minutes. After that, everyone will simply switch channels.
