Thinking of an argument I once had with a former housemate of mine... buzzing around in my head so much I can’t concentrate so i’m writing it down lol.
It constantly baffles me when people/friends/ extended family say they enjoy the X Factor and shows alike, when most are kind, compassionate, intelligent, left-wing-yy (lol) people . I have always only ever has utter disgust for these shows and genuinely cannot see how they are any different to the victorian freak show - apart for the fact that there is an apparent ‘winner’? I also can’t really see how it is much different from the manipulative and ridiculous journalism of They Daily Mail... it correlates exactly to their writing style- judgmental, orthodox, bullying sensationalism. The X-factor is often defended as just harmless fun - but actually its a very dark show. A very conformist way of thinking and manipulative system echoing mob mentality that is being thrust upon audiences as normal, harmless and funny. Slowly manipulating a nation into thinking about one another with hugely conventionalist judgement and hate, encouraging herd attitude. I can really see why David Cameron likes it Conservative TV heaven: a whole lot of entitlement to you and bullying degrading someone worse off than you, laughing faceless from the comfort of your sofa at someone who hasn’t even got a chance. Yet again people who usually despise these things will happily watch and defend the X factor and all the other same shit formatted the same way. And my thoughts on those people who say they watch for ‘pleasure of the singing ‘and don’t laugh at the more vulnerable ones’, they are just the same. Even if you are just watching from the sidelines you have still joined in, you are still under the brainwash and glorifying this way of thinking.
The other blindly obvious further horror of the show is the manipulation of mentally ill people. Again, people who enjoy the show and this aspect would almost definitely jump to support any anti bullying schemes in particular if connected to mentally ill people, but for some reasons because its on a TV screen they go along with it. Think of a local school talent show, if a kid with mental health problems went up and sang a song, I assume (and hope like hell) humanity still exists and people would support that kid, but again on TV, we brand them as ‘weird’ ‘freak’ shit’, laugh and probably make a gif about it. Not all blame can be put on the viewer, the TV producers of the show are specifically choosing people who they know will rally up audiences, deliberately picking someone with a provocative personality no care to their mental health or otherwise. Once more- even if you don’t laugh you are still joining in and supporting this regime . I can’t understand it, i knew it was wrong when I was thirteen, yet I have family of forty/fifty that can’t even see it happening. And this is my main reason for writing this, I can usually and have previously control my anger and annoyance of these shows, putting it down to difference in likes and beliefs, but when you actually think about the awfulness of these parts of the shows I can not really find any redeeming quality that out weighs this frankly medieval aspect. As all I have said above about The Mail, Freak shows and Cameron.. in the end is opinion and if people enjoy it, so be it I will just change the channel, swallow my pride and buy a Rage Against the Machine single again.. but this is what I think it really needs to be discussed and written about more. So people could maybe become more aware of what they are taking part in.
Wonderful Jo Brand sums it up better than I ever could in an interview with the independent:
“I think they wheel on people on who have mental health problems for other people to laugh at," she said. "It is easy for all of us to take the p*** out of someone who thinks they can sing when they can’t and I think that’s very cruel,” she said.“The field of mental illness is complex because as well as issues like schizophrenia and depression there are lots of other different shades of problems."Brand added that contestants’ loved ones should let them down gently about their lack of singing talent to help them avoid embarrassment.“Are they so socially-isolated they don’t have family and friends to tell them the truth?” she asked. “It’s more and more a feature of society to hold people up to ridicule for one reason or another.”
And this, my overused video in this on going argument, from the days of it being plastered over my profile on my myspace account when I was fifteen, it still is as relevant and important to me today. As i’m a shit arguer, people sum it up far better than I ever can haha:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE8il8TyMxg
Anyway, this is a very opinionated rant but is not an attack and I’m sorry if I have offended any one. But it has genuinely been one of the most bemusing phenomenons of my life, I really remember watching it at a friends 13th Birthday party and thinking ‘this is awful, and I know everyone is going to pretend they never watched it by next year’ but I am 21 now and people are still watching it religiously.
ANYWAY ANYWAY
Be quiet self, lower your self from your high horse your supposed to be doing a dissertation, stop procrastinating and complaining about shit (literally)
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