'Alter Ego' Is a Symbol of America's Frightening Future
FOX's new competition show allows wannabe singers to craft crude avatars in hopes of becoming a digital superstar, presuming that the public is too far gone from reality to deserve anything better
The phrase “uncanny valley” is thrown around a lot these days. We’ve nearly gotten to the point where two words that are used to describe something that is artificial or robotic in nature as eerily humanlike—so much so that it evokes a feeling of distress or unease—are nearly meaningless because of how often they’re ascribed to things that are simply just weird. The same goes for the word “dystopian,” which has now become a favorite throw-around adjective for any societal problem that feels strange or unjust. As much as these two descriptors are lazily applied to things that don’t actually fit their definition, there’s no denying that they are certainly the most appropriate terms that come to mind when trying to make sense of Alter Ego, the confounding new FOX reality competition where “singers” of middling-to-mildly-deserving merit suck themselves into a skin-tight motion capture suit to create the show’s titular animated personalities so they can “perform” for possibly the most perplexing panel of judges ever assembled for a reality television show. The whole thing feels like an extended bit from an episode of 30 Rock collided with the plotline of an unmemorable episode of Black Mirror—two more pop culture references that are overused, but when you’re trying to ascertain the meaning of something like Alter Ego, you must grasp at every straw you can to make sense out of something that was never supposed to make any sense at all.
It’s not that Alter Ego is bad. Oh, quite the opposite. This is a program that is so bafflingly watchable I had to wonder if there was some Josie and the Pussycats-esque government subliminal messaging that kept me not only watching but wanting more. Every aspect of Alter Ego makes me throw my hands in the air and wonder how and why this show got made—as in why was this developed and how did this make it to air without anyone involved in the production stopping themselves and saying, “Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. And there’s no way we can solve that problem.”
In each episode (so far), a handful of people with zero discernible star quality who each feel like pariahs of society strap themselves into the motion capture suit and sing a song backstage while their colorful alter egos—characters that they’ve helped design down to the hairstyle and skin color—perform in front of the judges. The conceit of the show seems to be that once people who are too shy, self-doubting, or generally boring turn themselves into 3D animated avatars, that will somehow make them become so irresistibly magnetic that the world will fall in love with them and their alter ego’s star will catapult to the highest echelons of the music industry. The show repeatedly calls them “the next generation’s superstar,” as if we’re anywhere close to wanting to go to a live concert and see an unknown 3D figure performing before us. Not even on the stage, but on a giant screen—one of the show’s most obnoxious deceits. You see, Alter Ego is edited in post to make it seem as though the alter egos are performing on stage in front of the judges. But these aren’t like the bastardized holograms of Whitney Houston and Prince that can somehow be projected onto a stage, there is zero physical presence in our world. Each episode, an audience and the judges watch as the motion-captured contestants sing and dance on screens above them, while the show’s stage, where we’re supposed to be convinced that the performance is happening, sits empty. There’s no mystifying, brand new technology here, it’s all a cheat. Somehow that makes it even more compelling.
But possibly the most fascinating thing about Alter Ego is that panel of judges. There seems to be some unwritten rule in reality competition show guidelines that there must be at least one judge on a panel who does not have any reason to be there. Simon Cowell on American Idol. Ken Jeong on The Masked Singer. Anyone who has ever set foot in the America’s Got Talent studio. Alter Ego flips the script a little, having two judges who completely fit the show’s warped ideology and two that are entirely out of left field. There’s hit-making producer will.i.am, who makes sense for the show as he famously brought us to 3008 during his tenure in the fabled, Fergie-assisted years of The Black Eyed Peas. Then we have Grimes, who seems like she came prepackaged with the show’s initial pitch. She’s a cybergoth technocrat færie who is so known for merging technology and music that she not only voices a character in the recent Cyberpunk 2077 game but crafted an entire DJ mix to accompany the game’s release essentially just for fun. And sitting on either side of those two are Alanis Morisette and Nick Lachey, the former a powerhouse alternative genre superstar and the latter someone who has managed to cling onto fame despite it desperately trying to get away from him at every turn. Together, these four are the ones who will decide the superstar for the next generation. The fate of all culture is, for some reason, in their hands.
It often seems that none of these judges really know why they’ve been beckoned to Alter Ego either (besides the opportunity for a fat FOX network check), so it’s commendable that they manage not to break down every episode about where they’ve found themselves in their careers. Nick Lachey, in fact, is running mad with power while Alanis Morisette is genuinely trying to root out any crumb of humanity or emotion she can from each contestant so she can at least keep from being driven mad by each passing performance. And by god, does she have every right to be.
Far and away the aspect of Alter Ego that is equally the most infuriating and mystifying is that there is zero discernible reasons for any of the humans behind the digitally created personas to actually be “on” that stage (again, screen) other than that they’re all deeply insecure. This is a singing competition where the ability to sing is not a qualification for getting past the initial round of producer consultations. Being able to hit a note or carry a tune might mean something, but it’s nothing if you’re up against another alter ego who has a more vivid je ne sais quoi that fits a list of inconsistent criteria that the judges are looking for, said criteria existing only in their own hearts and minds. If will.i.am thinks someone could be the next person to drone into the mic in a faux British accent on his next single, he might decide to keep them. In the very first episode, Nick Lachey is on a power trip and keeps trying to put through an alter ego who had a performance that, if I were to describe it as “forgettable,” would be a vast understatement. But if someone whose relevancy was dashed the moment Newlyweds was canceled sees some kind of special glint in a 3D-modeled cartoon’s eye, he can be the one that decides the fate of the entire episode. Again, this is all based entirely on a judge’s discretion. There is no set discussion of singing ability, character design, use of technology, etc. The alter egos “walk” out, perform their little song poorly, and then either have their digital form transmogrified onto a giant floating diamond or have their bodies sent into the ether to wait until the final judging selection at the end of an audition episode.
You’d think that, though absurd, that would be a simple enough formula to follow without too much deviation that would cause the audience to question the process too much. But no. Instead, it seems as though certain technological flourishes are allotted to some performers while others just sing their little song and get shuffled off into the netherworld of existence to await the final judgment. In the first episode, a character named Bernie Burns has little parts of his outfit light on fire when he’s on stage, and in the next episode, an alter ego summons a rainfall of flowery glitter around them while they sing Kacey Musgrave’s “Rainbow.” It makes the performances slightly more compelling and seems to be one of the main reasons why anyone thinks this technology would be worth using to replace an actual human in concert. So it’s a wonder, then, that not every contestant makes use of this, especially when they’re relying on voices that are less than stunning. But what’s so baffling is that it doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other to the judges. As they watch Bernie Burns light aflame, they stare on, mouths agape, like spectators in Panem while Katniss Everdeen twirls her dress into flames in The Hunger Games. We have to watch and believe that what they’re seeing is somehow worth marveling at, but what’s so majestic about a digitally-created effect? It’s not a practical, real-life trick. Alter Ego assumes that watching these little purple alien people dance around is just as compelling as watching Sasha Velour remove her wig to a windfall of rose petals. But the reason that reveals of all sorts have been so popular on shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race are because we as the spectators get to watch legitimate talents work with stunning ingenuity to craft something larger than life. Alter Ego is like being forced to show up to your least favorite coworker’s one-person improv show.
The existence of Alter Ego seems to be predicated on the notion that we as a culture are moving toward being an entirely digital entity. The raging popularity of impossibly perfect inhuman abominations like digitally-rendered influencer Lil Miquela or holographic Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku and the continued insistence on touring with holograms of deceased musicians have all thrust the thinking forward in such a misguided way that there is a festering brain rot among the money-grubbing powers that be, causing them to believe that there is just as much—if not more—want for 3D-modeled, motion capture stars as there is for the real, live human counterpart. And maybe there is a certain sect of the world that does want that, but even in a global pandemic, the resounding consensus was not, “Wow. I love these at-home performances. I wish we could have more of those, but only if we strip artists of the very humanity that makes them interesting.”
Alter Ego spends so much time trying to convince us that having real human beings controlling the digital avatars will make them not only lovable but irresistible. Maybe there’s a reality where that could be true, but the problem is that these people are participating in a talent show where the most important qualification for auditioning is having some reason to not want to sing in front of an audience, not vocal ability or star quality. Even the standards for making it on the show are completely indecipherable. Crohn’s Disease makes you feel less than confident? Okay, sure, understandable. Got some generalized shyness? I guess. Have a babyface, want to be in a boy band, or short? You too can turn those horrific afflictions into a stunning digital career through the magic of Alter Ego! So it’s no surprise that rarely does an alter ego perform and truly capture an audience’s heart. Why? Because stage presence is something that, generally, can’t be taught, and it won’t magically appear just because you’re performing backstage—where, by the way, you’re still being filmed and singing in front of an entire tech crew! You will still be shy there too, it doesn’t matter how many censors they strap to your short body!
But the judges and audience eat it up. The alter egos come out and give some of the lamest performances you’ve ever seen and everyone acts like they’ve just witnessed the second coming of Susan Boyle. No one cares if you’re singing out of key or if you completely miss a note or your song selection totally sucks—as long as you’re willing to tape a bunch of sensors to your body, you’re a digital deity! We’re forced to watch this all play out on our televisions, questioning our sanity as the judges watch the alter egos perform and marvel at the technology as if they’ve just popped in the DVD for Lord of the Rings and are watching a featurette about how Andy Serkis made Gollum come to life! “This technology is amazing,” Alanis Morisette says. Did she miss Avatar? The Planet of the Apes franchise reboot? The weer-woo-wer-woo climax of Annihilation? The tech in Alter Ego is like day and night compared to anything similar you’ve seen in a cinema, the editors don’t linger too long on closeups of the alter egos talking to avoid letting us in on the fact that their mouth movements are shockingly crude, barely mouthing along with the movements of the insecure humans backstage. How, then, is that conducive to a singing superstar? None of the components of this technology that the show is touting as the “future of the industry” are remotely new or even flashy enough to hold anyone’s attention for longer than a 90-second performance. You’d be better off just watching the early viral video of the animated alien singing “I Will Survive” for the thousandth time in your life.
Alter Ego is simply the painful result of television execs finally taking their warped idea of “the Instagram Generation” too far. For the last few years, studios have been turning out indie horror films revolving around the ideas that our digital footprint and hunger for fame have become inextricable from our real lives. The Unfriended franchise and films like Cam, Spree, and Assassination Nation have been trying to convey just how horrific it can be that our culture is so totally plugged in, but those films—at the very least—had a message that they were trying to relay, even if it often became ham-fisted and platitudinal. Alter Ego basks in the false glory of digital nothingness. It assumes we are too far gone to know what we really want, attempting to show us what it thinks we deserve: reality television with a rudimentary technological twist, algorithmically formulated to be as disgustingly watchable as possible. And that’s the dreadful news of what really Alter Ego really means for us. Here’s the truth about the future: there are no flying cars or universal healthcare, just disgraceful regurgitations of ideas that were done better by other people, watered down by the banal generalization that their existence means something for the people who feel unseen in our oversaturated cultural landscape. And, somehow, it’ll always be inconceivably and unavoidably mesmerizing.