One of society's pervasive myths is that hard work and talent win, in creative fields as in all others, and that those who sit in the spotlight are there because they have earned it. It's a comforting, palliative notion, in contrast to the vaguely upsetting idea that, say, the most famous and acclaimed singer is neither the most gifted nor the most dedicated, and that the most gifted and dedicated one might be teaching middle-school music class somewhere.
But creative success and its cousin, fame, have always been the product of an alchemical mix of talent, diligence, and a little something extra. The significance of that something extra is on full display in today's media environment, where performance of self via social media is a newly explicit test of the charisma that has always been necessary to achieve fame.
Netflix’s new eight-episode docuseries Pop Star Academy is an exploration of the delicate balance of talent, dedication, and charisma required to craft celebrity. Part American Idol with the cutthroat edge of Korean survival shows, Pop Star Academy documents 20 young women as they compete against each other for nearly two years for one of six spots in a new K-pop–style girl group called KATSEYE.
The product of a collaboration between HYBE, the Korean entertainment company behind BTS, and Interscope Geffen A&M, an American label that represents artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Camila Cabello, Pop Star Academy is an attempt to import Korea’s rigorous and successful K-pop training system to the U.S. to create a “global girl group.” The series isn’t necessarily for dedicated K-pop fans—many of whom tracked this same competition in The Debut: Dream Academy in real time last year—but rather aims to illuminate the industry for new audiences, much like previous Netflix docuseries did for cheerleading (Cheer, America’s Sweethearts) and Formula 1 racing (Drive to Survive).
Pop Star Academy covers the competition in two phases. First, the contestants participate in a grueling training and development program in Los Angeles for over a year. They live together and work with coaches to refine their performance skills. Each month, they are evaluated by HYBE and Geffen executives, and sometimes contestants are eliminated. At every point in the program, the trainees are ranked based on their singing and dancing skills, as well as their overall combined scores.
The basic proposition of talent competition shows is a meritocratic fantasy in which hard work, talent, and opportunity are all one needs to achieve stardom. They invite viewers to imagine their own hidden specialness being recognized, and then shaped and honed and polished into a diamond: I too could be—could make myself—Taylor Swift! That fantasy is punctured almost immediately in Pop Star Academy.
“Usually people believe that skill is the most important part, but for me it’s star power,” said HYBE chairman Bang Si-hyuk in one episode. Star power, or star quality, as it’s also referred to in the show, is hard even to define, an ineffable mix of charisma (itself largely mysterious), stage presence, and confidence. While singing and dancing can be taught, star power cannot be.
The camera shot immediately following Bang’s star-power quote is the audience’s first glimpse of Manon Bannerman, a Swiss trainee who was a late addition to the program. The casting manager who found her on social media said, “There was something about her aura that was so calming yet so vibrant at the same time, and that isn’t something that you could put a science or math behind, it’s just a feeling that you get.”
Manon had no previous formal training in singing or dancing; throughout the program, she is consistently ranked at the bottom of the lists in terms of skills and attitude. But as a viewer, you can’t help but feel captivated by her presence. Her face is expressive and vulnerable, and to an untrained eye, her dancing skills don’t seem particularly far behind her competitors’. Without an understanding of the minutiae of skills that differentiate the competitors, what viewers see is that sense of presence—and an underdog narrative.
Manon’s level of commitment is questioned throughout the series. She gets sick and misses several classes. She’s moved out of the girls’ group house to live with her aunt because she breaks house rules and is late to practices. At one point, their coach says that given what she’s seen of Manon, she would not cast her in the group.
But the coaches’ and execs' opinions are not the only ones that matter, and quickly it becomes clear that star power—and its lucrative latter-day iteration, parasocial appeal—will be a huge factor in who makes the final group.
After more than a year of training in NDA-enforced secrecy, the program goes public as The Debut: Dream Academy, a 12-week web-series survival show. For that show the trainees will compete in three "missions," which are singing and dancing challenges designed to showcase their skills. The missions are published on YouTube, where fans follow the contestants—and, crucially, cast votes for their favorites on Weverse.
After the first round of voting, Manon rockets to the top of the rankings. She’s had months of performance training, but she’s still not up to the skill level of many of her peers. That doesn’t matter though, because through the screen, the quality that translates the most is her star power. The fans love her.
The other trainees are frustrated by the fans’ affection for Manon because they know her skill level and they’ve been annoyed by her flakiness. "People are upset that she is the person who’s getting so much attention," said one trainee, the Slovak Adelá Jergová. "It’s not based on anything right now. It’s just because she’s pretty." After her elimination, American trainee Brooklyn Van Zandt said, "We are so hardworking. And like me personally, I haven’t missed a single day, ever."
The racial politics of the situation can’t be ignored; undoubtedly part of Manon’s appeal for fan voters is that she is a Black woman in a program meant to create a group with international appeal in a genre where Black and Brown performers have been sidelined or written off completely. It is also dismally unsurprising that a major narrative about laziness is centered on a Black woman, which raises the question of how accurate these grumblings even are. With two years of footage condensed into eight hours of final product, it’s hard to say.
Manon’s competitors bristle at her success with the public because her narrative disrupts the meritocratic alternate universe they’ve been living inside for over a year. It doesn’t seem fair for her to be such a fan favorite, but she is. As the weeks go on, Manon holds her spot near the top, and several top girls are sent home.
In the finale, Manon secures the sixth and final spot on KATSEYE, beating out four other trainees, including American Emily Kelavos, who was the top dancer for most of the series. I felt a thrill watching the show’s underdog come out on top, but I also felt sympathy for Emily. Even I could see what a phenomenal dancer she was, and I also saw how much her vocals improved over the course of the program. If the criteria were raw talent, skill, or mastery, she would have made the group. The goal of this project, though, wasn’t to create a group of the best singers and dancers, but rather to create a globally dominant girl group. That goal requires star quality.
On an episode of the Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast recapping the series, Chris DeRosa criticized the decision to cast contestants from social media. "The person who does a TikTok in their house alone does not translate to becoming a global superstar, period," he said. Sure, except sometimes it does. Let us not forget that Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Troye Sivan, the Weeknd, and so many other musical artists found commercial success after building their followings online. Of course, this isn’t to say this is the only route to commercial success for an artist of any type, but to dismiss the qualities necessary to succeed on social media as frivolous and ancillary is naïve.
Between painful eliminations and transparent reality TV ploys to get the girls to turn against each other, Pop Star Academy was difficult to watch at times. According to Mitra Darab, president of HxG in HYBE America, the drama served to froth up the audience: “Yes, you’re creating the group, but equally as important is you’re building that fan base.”
Sometimes the Pop Star Academy project feels incredibly cynical. It takes that critique of 2000s-era bubblegum pop (“They’re just musical acts cooked up in a lab somewhere!”) to a new level, with marketing execs giving constant input on the creative work. There is no doubt that this is a project designed to make billions of dollars, and if some impressionable teenage girls are touched by the human stories along the way, even better. No one spends money like a fan.
But I also think this is the most honest depiction of the realities of the talent industry that I’ve seen. KATSEYE will undoubtedly be written off by some people as a soulless product of two mega-corporations merging on a project, but I think the industrial process is instructive in its hard-boiled pragmatism. Not every artist or pop group is lab-grown by marketers and focus-grouped to hell, but all those who've achieved creative success know—or should—that it always takes more than just talent and desire.
There’s that adage that sports coaches love to trot out to motivate their teams: "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard." I’d add to it: On their own, hard work and talent are never enough.
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