Yahoo News ‘The Idol’: Every Pop Culture Reference, Explained
Love it or hate it, everyone’s going to be talking about The Idol for the next six weeks. I, personally, adore everything I’ve seen so far. Serve me a piping hot dose of drivel any day! But then again, I’m a sucker for a raunchy dissection of fame’s dark underbelly. As a voracious pop culture connoisseur, there’s nothing more fascinating to me than a piece of entertainment that’s brave enough to tackle the wicked ramifications of glitz and glamour. We see these things play out every day in the headlines of gossip rag websites and Twitter threads, but to actually, acutely study the art of stardom is no simple feat.
To satirize something successfully, one must be a disciple of what they’re sending up. If you half-ass something, chances are that someone in your audience will catch on. Surely The Idol creator and writer Sam Levinson—a nepo baby himself—and its star and co-writer The Weeknd know a thing or two about how Hollywood chews up and spits out its players. However, firsthand experience isn’t enough to rest on when creating something this sprawling and contentious. With a show so controversial, audiences will be clamoring for proof that Levinson and The Weeknd truly know of which they speak.
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While, at this point, the jury remains out about whether The Idol’s analysis of pop stardom will become a commentary as blistering as something like Vox Lux, the show is off to a solid start, thanks to a keen eye for pop culture references that are both overt and a bit more understated. (Yes, even on The Idol, things can be understated.) Over the next six weeks, I’ll be chronicling the show’s allusions to entertainment, celebrity, film, television, and music, and breaking down how they enhance, or hinder, the show’s story and themes. Any big spoilers will be marked as such. And if you have a question about my credentials, take it up with the homemade Lady Gaga disco stick I cobbled together at age 14.
Episode 1, “Pop Tarts and Rat Tales”
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It’s Britney, bitch!: It would be impossible to make a good show about a harangued pop star without mentioning the great Britney Spears. The series’ third trailer gleefully (and expertly) used Spears’ “Gimme More,” notable for being Spears’ comeback single after the buzzcut heard round the world. Lily-Rose Depp’s character Jocelyn is similarly troubled, fresh from a mental breakdown that landed her in the hospital. Jocelyn and Britney’s journeys are meant to be parallel, with Vanity Fair reporter Talia (Hari Nef) commenting on the “referential” choreography for Jocelyn’s next single.
“It’s an homage,” responds one of Jocelyn’s many team members, Nikki (Jane Adams). “I think what Britney and Jocelyn have gone through is really unique…look at what she’s overcome, with Britney as well. People count them out. This is Jocelyn saying, ‘I will not be written off.’” Talia also mentions that she “grew up watching Jocelyn on Rock House,” a fictional kids’ television show that Jocelyn was cast in, like how Spears was in The Mickey Mouse Club.
Levinson has denied that Jocelyn is based on any one particular starlet, but the show certainly owns up to its Britney references, and could even potentially involve Spears in some way. In 2021, Spears posted a photo shortly after her conservatorship was terminated, saying she “just shot a movie titled ‘THE IDOL.’” It’s unclear if whatever that project was is the same as this one, but Levinson and The Weeknd were pictured with Spears last summer. Perhaps we’re building up to a cameo.
Pop Star Reference Clocker: During a photo shoot for her album cover, Jocelyn sports a hospital bracelet to allude to her recent stint in a medical center. The bracelet immediately conjures memories of the one Selena Gomez wore in the artwork for her “Bad Liar” single cover, referencing her own hospitalization for Lupus treatment.
Later, when Jocelyn and her crew go out to a club, they all dance to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” Naturally, Madonna has contributed to the show’s official soundtrack.
At the club, Jocelyn meets Tedros, the enigmatic guru who is about to turn her life and career upside down. When she invites him over to her house, the two of them cozy up, and she mentions that she thinks pop music is superficial. Tedros and her both agree that Prince’s “When Doves Cry” is the antithesis of pop’s superficiality.
When Jocelyn plays Tedros a demo of her new song “World Class Sinner,” Tedros says that it’s bad because he doesn’t believe her. He cites Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” as an example of what Jocelyn should be doing in the vocal booth. “When she sings, there’s no doubt that knows how to fuck,” Tedros says.
Read me my rights and arrest me: Jocelyn and her best friend/assistant, Leia, have a quiet evening at home, watching Basic Instinct. This one’s easy to break down. At its core, The Idol is a modern spin on the erotic thriller genre. Levinson’s direction shares a lot of the same trademarks as Basic Instinct’s director, Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven’s films blend sex and violence, sometimes to the point where their differences are indistinguishable, in order to commentate on social mores. Levinson’s works have all done this as well and have been equally as controversial as Verhoeven’s best-known films; no doubt Levinson is likening himself to Verhoeven with this inclusion.
If you haven’t seen it (get on it), Basic Instinct follows a writer of crime fiction who murders her boyfriends, and lures the cop investigating her into her trap. In the scene that Jocelyn and Leia are watching, Sharon Stone tells Michael Douglas that, in her next novel, a detective falls for the wrong woman, and she kills him. That line of dialogue punctuates the scene, and it could be some foreshadowing as to what ultimately happens with Jocelyn and Tedros.
Hollywood bloodsuckers: The Weeknd has compared Tedros to Dracula, and it seems like that’s not too far from the truth, judging by how the camera frames his character. When Tedros arrives at Jocelyn's mansion, her palatial gates slowly open to his silhouette, shrouded in darkness, his long, black coat looking more like a cape. He’s dressed almost exactly like Wesley Snipes in Blade. While this does give him an air of menace, it also shows us that Tedros is trying to look the part. He desperately wants to be sexy, mysterious, and irresistible to get control over Jocelyn. Like a vampire, once he’s invited inside, there’s no turning back.
My Dear Narcissism: No surprise that a show starring and co-written by The Weeknd is going to get a little self-referential. When Jocelyn and Tedros are making out in the depths of his club, his face is often half-covered, while the other half is bathed in red light. These shots look almost exactly like the cover of his My Dear Melancholy EP.
Jocelyn also loves erotic asphyxiation, and she later allows Tedros to choke her, resulting in him covering her face with a robe, and tying its velvet drawstring around her neck. The Weeknd is no stranger to kink play. In fact, he’s got a whole song and music video about a woman asking him to choke her.
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