'American Idol' needs to open the closet door

Anoop Desai succeeds Season 6's most beloved self-made joke, Sanjaya Malakar, as a serious contender of South Asian descent -- and judging from his moves while performing Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative" last week, he means to become a heartthrob. The sexy Asian male is still an infrequent presence in American pop culture, and Desai is already facing a tendency among commentators to turn him into a joke. Will he fight it off?

All of these new twists on the idea of the perfect pop star stand in contrast to one gaping hole in the Top 13. Not one African American man, and only two women, made the cut. The presence instead of the self-styled "blue-eyed soul patrol" -- white pretenders to the R&B throne -- highlights the continued existences of one of American pop's most disturbing closets: the legacy of white performers borrowing, respectfully or not, from black musical styles, and often superseding the originators of the music they reinterpreted.

Though Elvis Presley is an icon of racial crossover moves -- and though Jackson became stigmatized, in part, by trying to move the opposite way, from black to white -- the racial closet actually has existed as long as American pop itself. It was particularly prevalent in the pre-rock era that "Idol" so effectively invokes.

The very idea of any artists interpreting any song, rather than staying within a style that connects to his roots or reflects her private self and home community, hearkens back to the days when Jewish immigrants wrote Christmas songs in Tin Pan Alley, and stars like Roy Scherer Jr. and Doris Mary Anne Von Kappelhoff changed their names to Rock Hudson and Doris Day.

Identity issues

The more current mainstream pop stars that "Idol" relentlessly celebrates also have complicated but smoothed-over identities. Mariah Carey took years to come to terms with being biracial; Quebecois Celine Dion continues to wrestle with her bilingual reality. Whitney Houston became increasingly problematic for music industry handlers after marrying Bobby Brown and becoming more "black" in both her affect and her sound. Barry Manilow's sexuality has been fodder for rumor throughout his career.

Jackson fits in perfectly with this pantheon of spiritual mentors.

His secrets might push at the door of his closet, but he's never let them out.

We'll see if "Idol" finds another kind of opening.

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ann.powers@latimes.com