Pomp and Circumstance

I wasn’t going to write about The X-Factor because, well, I wasn’t going to watch it. I have watched it in previous years, mainly because I was unaware of its turdness and didn’t want to be left out of a hundred conversations. How foolish of me! How could I not know it was the work of the devil? We are only a few weeks into the new series and I’m sad to report that I didn’t learn from my mistakes of yesteryear and I watched Sunday’s programme.

Well I watched 20 minutes, it’s all I could take. You see I had a lapse in concentration, I lost my focus, and I thought that if I am going to be irritated by a thousand conversations and arguments about the series then it might be slightly less irritating if I knew what they were on about. HOW WRONG I WAS.
My gripe with The X-Factor isn’t that it’s a talent show, and the fact that talent shows are ten a penny (or a dime a dozen, or even yen a ten (does that work?)), and are all the exact same thing whichever way they spin it. No, that’s a reason to hate ALL talent shows for sure, but there’s something about X-Factor that makes it more detestable than any other show, and that’s the whole pomp and circumstance of it all, like it’s the epitome of class and culture.

We are made to believe that the “judges” are these all powerful sentient beings who we have to kneel before and lavish them with whoops and gushes and “boy wouldn’t it be swell if we could be like them?”. It’s not the whole talentless pricks judging talent thing, I don’t mind that because it doesn’t take a talented person to tell if someone is talented. A lot of people do take offence to this though, seemingly forgetting that they are also talentless and yet still phone up every week voting for the contestant who they “judged” to be best.

What I find offensive is the fake personas the four of them have adopted. It worked for Gordon Ramsey and Alan Sugar, yes they are wankers in reality, but on screen they really wank it up an extra notch, kind of like a pantomime villain, but one who would punch a child in the audience. Simon Cowell’s head is so far up his own arsehole it’s on his shoulders. He’s not as mean as he used to be, and every so often he realises this and insults someone just to stay consistent with the persona. “That was the best performance of the night and err…actually you’re a cunt and I fucked your mother”. Louis Walsh and Dannniii Minogue talk a hell of a lot for people who have absolutely nothing to say, and there really is nothing left to say about them.

And then there’s Cheryl Cole. Revered by the nation like a goddess. Driven by her own ego her one goal is to be more popular than Cowell. She disagrees with absolutely everything he says, if he were ever to say that rape is wrong, she would say it’s right. If he were to say that Nigerian toilet attendants are great, she would punch one. The only thing more irritating than her is the people who idolise her. She has had a successful solo career despite releasing songs that can only be described as fuck awful, all because these people have bought into this horrible concept of the celebrity. Why would you want to be like her? She has nothing interesting to say, looks really aren’t everything.

The show treats its audience like they’re idiots, and they must be idiots if they’re still watching. The format of the show has been exactly the same year after year save for a few superficial tweaks. Nothing is surprising anymore, if you hear some sombre piano in the background you know a sob story about a woman who was eaten by a dog is coming. If anything new does occur, the producers make sure it is repeated, because hey, if the audience liked it first time round, why wouldn’t they like it a second time? And they do like it. Jedward were the new thing last year, an obviously shit entity whose only saving grace was the “comedy” of it all. This year of course we have a gay version of Jedward, and in future series there will now always be a terrible duo who provide some comic relief.

I said I watched 20 minutes of Sunday’s episode, and like all of the Sunday episodes from last year, it featured a musician who had a tour to promote. Clearly people will have bought tickets to see Usher upon seeing his performance, despite it consisting of him haphazardly shouting “Yeah” and “Come on” every now and again while dancing like he’s being attacked by a wasp.

The format of the Sunday show has already come under some hyperbolic criticism from The News of the World, where the headline “what the X is going on?” was used in reaction to that whore everyone seems to hate not going out. What the fuck is going on indeed. For this inconsequential event to make the front page of a national newspaper with such an aggressive headline is to suggest that this show is the only thing us Brits have to live for. People are throwing themselves off buildings in protest! If only!