So the ‘X Factor’ has finished. Finally. I felt like I had to write this blog as I am totally and utterly fed up of trashy, gaudy and shameless reality television commanding our screens. It appears like a limbering, snivelling, freak-like creature - it is so repulsive, yet so compelling at the same time. I mention the X Factor specifically because I believe this to be the worst of the bunch, but all the others are arguably just as equally to blame.
‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’ is another of these reality show. Presented by bumbling Geordie duo Ant and Dec, it plagues our screens with z-list celebrities eating grubs and performing other sickening jungle-themed stunts. Famous for appearing on it this year is Gillian McKeith, the fake doctor who is famous for making fat people cry on TV and can somehow tell you how healthy you are by poking at your shit in a box.
Another big offender is ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. An appalling excuse for a dancing competition whereby the ‘judges’ who are failed entertainers-in-disguise either lay on the praise to hear great cheers from the ‘audience’, or give sniping criticisms to hear pantomime-style boos from a crowd of complete idiots. Overseeing all of this is the eternal coffin-dodger Bruce Forsyth who croons and gurns his way through each weekly (weakly) episode recounting knowingly lame joke after knowingly lame joke.
This reality fad has gone on too long. I think its time is due and it should fall out of favour with the public and be relegated to the thousands of other channels sandwiched between QVC and Dave+5.
I know what you are going to say. It’s just a bit of fun, it’s a laugh, and you’re being overly critical of a genre of television that has captured the heart of the nation. No, this ‘genre’ of reality television needs to curl up and die. Soon. It is ruining the culture of celebrity by creating them from talentless nobodies who happen to have a passable singing voice; it is deceiving the public by getting them to vote by phone for something that is (probably) rigged from the start by the evil Simon Cowell and his monopolising record company; it pretty much takes up the whole television schedule and pushes really decent programmes from the spotlight.
Talent should be something that is discovered by people working hard and getting themselves out there. True talent shines through, and is not achieved by feckless billionaires giving them a recording contract in exchange for their soul.
The reality talent show is, I believe, the evolution of the freakshow. Thousands of people come and stand in front of the judges and sing their hearts out, most of them knowing they are awful. Do these people know they are being laughed at? If they are not already criminally insane, do they know how this show is making them look?
Ben Elton got it spot on in his book ‘Chart Throb’, in which, someone explains that because of the maths of the whole thing, the four main judges can only see a tiny fraction of the people who audition. Due to this, people are split into three main types of reality talent tv personality: clingers, mingers or blingers; these are the people who are most entertaining for the public, and who get to see the judges and be on the show. Although Ben Elton’s novel is a fictional piece of work, he does have a very good point and it gives a good insight into how the well oiled money machines works. This is partly why the deception of the whole thing should be exposed for what it really is, and that is a shallow, pathetic and depraved expression of the world in which we live.
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