The X Factor: The Final, ITV1

I have to completely disagree. Having had enough of being force fed this tedious show and its endless cyclical tirade of in-fighting and karaoke wannabes, I've decided this year to watch none. It seems that, given all the press attention handed over to the show, that I'm not the only one. Time to let proper musicians, who are struggling to gather an audience whilst WRITING and PERFORMING their own material have a chance and get rid of what has essentially become a few precocious teens singing over a backing tape.If the show were made up of the former it would far, far more entertaining and worthwhile, although undoubtedly it wouldn't line Simon Cowell's or ITV's pockets as much! Right, rant over.

I too have had enough of being force fed this degrading rubbish. Every weekend evening, as I am getting ready to go out, masked men burst into my room and change the channel on my television from BBC2 to ITV. They manacle me to my chair and force my eyelids wide open with steel hooks, like the ones in A Clockwork Orange. For the next couple of hours I sit there in my own filth watching The X Factor. Electrodes attached to my genitals with Marmite measure my state of arousal and automatically field a phone call voting for the act that I dislike the least. When the ordeal is over I am released and given an Iceland prawn ring to buy my silence. I tearfully devour it while listening to Spiderland by Slint, in the vain hope that their jarring a-melodic post rock will wash away the deep sense of shame I feel. When will the DELUDED public realise that what they really want is an updated version of Channel Fours' 1993 documentary The Next Big Thing, featuring acts who WRITE and PERFORM their own material. Artists like Elvis Presley, who's song Jailhouse Rock is so REAL that it takes on solid form and can be used to sand down wooden surfaces. The revolution starts here, today at 5:30pm, right after Songs of Praise.

Interesting tone. Of course, "Knock On Wood" might be more appropriate for that. p.s - how does the marmite taste?

It's heartening to see some intelligent writing about this subject. I refer to the last two paragraphs. 'Pop is seen as providing the social mobility that is ever more elusive for working-class youngsters' This is very true. But music (and the arts generally) have always been viewed by the working class as a way to escape poverty. This is not an entirely new concept. What's different about the MTV, talent show age is that the music/ media industries (working together as they now do) have never been more powerful and effective as a gatekeeper to success (ie earning a living) for the aspiring artist. And while the promise of 'making it' has never been so appealing (fast cars, glam lifestyle, bling, red carpet, celebrity adoration etc), the reality for most wannabe's who do 'make it' is an exploitative contract which will allow the Simon Cowells of this world to make maximum profits during their short over marketed, over hyped, totally managed, disposable careers. After that they are dumped as soon as everyone is (understandably) bored with them or even sick of them due to over exposure. At which point the next wannabe wins the next talent show. But how do you negotiate a better contract if you're a complete nobody entering a nationwide, prime time TV based talent contest. You can't and, to be fair, you don't really deserve one. This is the opposite to the old school way where you built up your fan base, established yourself as a viable artist (as a viable 'product', to use today's demeaning language) and only then started negotiating with the industry (now that you have actually something to negotiate with). You may not achieve instant - and fleeting - superstardom using this method, but you might be able to build up something resembling a paying career as a professional musician or singer. But there's an even more important side to this. As well as escaping poverty, pop music used to also be about giving a platform for working class artists (or anti - artists!) to publicly express their own views, feelings, ideologies, philosophies as individuals and (inevitably) as representatives of the working class. I'm not just talking about the overt, in-your-face use of pop music as a platform for social/ political commentary (Billy Bragg style). It's not even about the lyrics. It's a lot more subtle than that. A decade or two ago even chart pop music was a lot less homogenised and corporatised than it is today. The genre of 'pop music' used to include many unique and bizarre voices, looks, 'personalities' . Not all of them were inside the 16- 25 age bracket (gasp!) and some of them occasionally expressed some pretty sophisticated, coherent, astute and subversive ideas. These days......hmmm, not so much. Apart from just being a lot less demoralising, this weird mixture which filled the charts of yester-decade allowed everyone to recognise the more cynically manufactured 'dumbed down' side pop music for what it was. This is something I just can't imagine kids today being able to do because that's all there is these days. Manufactured boy bands aren't considered fake like they used to be, they're the norm now. When you look at today's chart orientated pop music you find that the messages have been reduced to those which support and integrate seamlessly with consumerism and corporatism. And this is at a time when social/ political awareness (and activism) has never been more widespread. Hmmmm something about this schism just doesn't add up. But let's not suggest the industry is being controlled in any way - lest we be accused of being one of those crazy 'conspiracy theorists'! Thanks to talent shows and other 'reality' TV shows like Big Brother young people are being trained to think and act in terms of pleasing the authority figures: pleasing the judges, pleasing the music industry, pleasing the stupid voice of Big Brother. The message is always the same 'Conform and obey, please your masters and you will get your reward' (usually money, a higher position in the rigid hierarchy and social approval). At this geopolitically unstable time, when this week alone we find out that the US appears to be putting its FEMA concentration camps on 72 hour standby and they have just pass new laws (National Defense Authorization Act) allowing them to arrest and detain US citizens indefinitely and without charge, we have to ask the following questions. How does the promotion via the mass media (TV shows, advertising etc) of super competitive conformity and thoughtless obedience to authority figures (and conformity to the social hierarchy in general) affect society - and especially the young? And is the promotion of such 'competitive conformity' as being acceptable, and even desirable, behaviour a healthy message for young people (or anyone)? History, and my own instincts, says that it is not healthy, and that it is in fact 'rather dangerous'. But perhaps some people think that it is a great idea and the sign of a healthy society at the peak of their civilisation... It is certainly interesting to note how many pop acts now routinely incorporate riot police 'dancers' and general police state imagery into their shows and videos. (Spears, GaGa, Beyonce, RIhanna, Take That are all guilty). It's hard to see how police state imagery is at all relevant to their messages of partying and promiscuity. One might wonder if this isn't an example of cognitive dissonance being used to desensitise the youth to the otherwise alarming direction this (Orwellian, Big Brother) society is headed in. (The TV show 'Big Brother' which depicted confinement in a 'fun' concentration camp complete with 24 hour surveillance and requiring obedience to authority and 'tasks' in order to get necessities like food as being mere 'entertainment' might also qualify as another example of this process of desensitisation). But of course we mustn't think too hard about these things, lest we be accused of being a crazy 'conspiracy theorists'! (and that means social disapproval!) According to these types of TV show, the default ambition today for young people today is not to express own's own views (or even to have any) and not to express one's own experiences through art or through one's lifestyle and hopefully earn a living doing so. Instead, today's default ambition, as defined by shows like X-factor, is to simply make it in the industry, to get rich by selling out (to be blunt) by perfectly conforming to what the industry considers is acceptable (ie what it considers is marketable, profitable, controllable, non threatening and able to be used in conjunction with advertising etc). On the surface these shows celebrate singing talent and live performance (which is great - who can argue against that?!), but underneath they also promote the cult of consumerism and a society ruled by corporatism, training new generations to want to conform in ever more competitive and extreme ways (eg the TV show 'Big Brother') to criteria set by consumer corporations which seem to get more and more narrow. The end result is a neurotic, dumbed down population full of stress, eating disorders, low self esteem, depression and violence where everyone is pig ignorant and incapable of comprehending how they are being manipulated into being 'consumer drones' or 'sheeple' and 'debt slaves' so instead of doing anything about it they just grasp at the provided panacea which comes in the form of increasingly more extreme versions of the very mass media entertainments that dumbed them down in the first place. It's all rather tragic really :( Of course there is still room for talent shows and people who just want to sing other people's songs for a living. Talent shows are not automatically evil! Not even the the X-factor is evil (well it is quite evil). The problem is really when millions choose to surrender their brains - their souls - to it. The problem (the dysfunction) in all honesty is with us - not 'them'. Nowhere is originality and authenticity promoted or rewarded. But equally, it seems that nowhere is it sought or demanded. Nowhere is it valued any more. To criticise it or demand better is viewed as being 'too serious' or 'too uptight' (as apparent in these very comments). So we put up with it for fear of being seen as an uptight, ranting, conspiracy nutter. Unable to reject such TV programming (interesting word, right?) we are destined to conform to it. And we wonder why the world is in such a mess? Most people now define originality and authenticity as being Lady GaGa who is probably the most corporate friendly, plagiarising, ruthlessly marketed, inauthentic, unoriginal, corporatism promoting act that has ever existed. But she does wear a telephone as a hat, so that makes all the difference apparently. If Orwell was alive he would no doubt add 'corporatism is art' to his 'freedom is slavery' and 'war is peace'. If Kurt Vonnegurt was alive he would say "and so it goes" It's may not be a case of poisoning the fish directly, but it is a case of poisoning the water. The only defence against this poisoning is decent journalism and criticism and more intelligent consumerism (if that isn't a contradiction in terms). If we do not form our own opinion about all of these talent shows and all of the crap being pedalled for 'art' or 'news' or even 'entertainment' then the mainstream media will provide us with an opinion, and it will be a favourable opinion because they need our participation in order to attract their advertisers. IOW no one else is going to ever examine what is going on in the music industry or the media except YOU, the consumer and the critic. Do you ever research where it all comes from? Do you ever follow the money? Of course you don't. You don't want to be labelled a 'conspiracy theorist' do you?! (social disapproval, remember!) Yet all that is required is a little awareness and critical thinking. Not just to the obvious things but to the subtle things as well. Did you notice the chains in the Little Mix video? Of course you didn't, it's just pop music right? It's not something worth engaging one's brain over, right? Anyway, don't believe a word I say. I research things and use my brain which probably makes me one of those awful conspiracy theorists! Instead, why not check out the music industry articles on this site (http://vigilantcitizen.com), or do your own research and then use your own mind - but only if you can be bothered obviously ;)