What I am frustrated by, though, is the shift toward the 'All in a good cause' justification for acts being given a chance to annoy us or entertain us in equal measure. At one stage, the 'Sob Story' was the main grievance I had with the show, and the manipulation of the audience by the show's producers. These days, we've moved on to the social good that is done by various people, and how disadvantaged youngsters have been given a chance. Sorry, but in terms of touting for votes - Fuck Off.
The clue as to the basis for this show is TALENT in the title. It is most definitely NOT anything to do with getting kids off the streets, occupying teenagers who would otherwise have mugged old ladies or stabbed a terrier. Nor is it a show that's called "They've All Worked Very Hard". Of course they fucking have, I'd expect them to do a bit more than fall out of bed, rub their teeth with a flannel and turn up with a shell suit expecting to be the next Diversity.
I expect BGT to find people with Talent. So, just like the Queen and Government should NOT be giving honours (MBEs, Knighthoods etc) to people on the basis of "Britain's Got People Who Do Their Jobs Quite Well", BGT judges should NOT be giving kudos to people who turn up to do their job. A singer last night appeared with her daughter for a crap double act. The woman had done "thousands of gigs", she claimed, and had been singing for 20 years. In such circumstances, I suggest that there's no element of discovery about her singing for us, nor of entertainment, nor of talent. In effect, she was doing her job, for which she is paid the minimum wage. I wonder if she dragged her daughter along to save a child minder fee (?)
Sorry, but the synchronised swimmers the other day were not viable as an act. I have nothing against the sport; in fact, it is one of the very hardest things to tackle, and I commend those who have the dedication to train for so long to achieve such good results. However, there is no place on BGT for four massive water tanks to be hoiked around, and used to display four women doing what amounted to their job. There were Olympic athletes. The correct arena for their skills is a swimming pool, and they should be in a competition such as the Olympics. A talent contest is just inappropriate. That's not a talent in this sense - otherwise we would have to watch showjumpers getting horses over parallel bars, blokes shoving a ha'penny, and a darts player scoring one-hundred-and-eighty. The fact that one of the four in the swimming team was about to cry having revealed her own sob story (she was deselected from the 2012 Olympics) is NOT a basis for us deciding on any enetertainment value in her getting wet. As I say, not something that belongs in a talent contest - by participating, they were actually devaluing their own sport and their efforts.
I thought the choir was good - the Welsh chaps in 'Only Boys Aloud'. HOWEVER, let's remove the fact that they all "worked so very hard" and remove the fact that the choirmaster collected the waifs and strays from desolate ex-mining communities and street corners where they hung around the entrances to Costcutter, Nisa and Spar shops. Let's instead concentrate on the talent aspect, and I suggest that whilst the choir was good, a blindfolded listener would struggle to distinguish it from nine others, formed from Welsh blokes. So, in summary, we heard a Welsh choir. This isn't really talent, so much as a choir from Wales in the running order; any Welsh choir would have done. Sorry, but it's true; there are dozens of really good choirs, and I don't think we suddenly 'discovered' something great, or different, or a group with any talent different from that within the well established tradition of blokes singing together.
The Mend were pretty good (not that this style of music is my own favourite) but just because they've done well for themselves and avoided getting into trouble on their sink-estate, that's not a reason to decide they have talent enough to go through ahead of anyone else. By default, that would be another sob story, or some sort of sociological triumph. The Zimmers tonight was another example of a desire to make us think "Ooh, aren't they marvellous, these old people", and their getting put through. Sorry, they can't sing for toffee [or chew it, probably] and wonderful as it all is that they sing and sway, it's not entertaining at all.
Last night an organ salesman appeared, and what did he do? He played the organ. Hmmmmmm. That's his fucking job, demonstrating to punters why they should spend £1500 on trying to perform like John Benson, from Sale of the Century. He was shite, but the 'performance' was fortunately short. I won't mention any of the various dance acts, because they are mostly boring and/or repetitive and/or working very hard. They all profess to offer the youth of today an outlet that stops them nicking sweets from Forbuoys. Older people are no better, as we've had the "Where's my keys, where's my phone?" crap - twice. Disappointingly, the Loveable Rogues decided to sing the same song again for their semi-final tonight. Let's hope that for the final, they've got something different.
I have previously commented on the visitors to these shores, whose own national 'talent shows' seem not to want them, or perhaps even exist. Is there a France's GT, Hungary's GT, Ireland's GT, Latvia's GT or Germany's GT? I don't know. It seems that the ineffective (and arguably non-existent) immigration control in the UK extends to opening the performance borders as well. Guatemala's Got Talent is still in the planning stage, so all Guatemalans are invited to come on down to BGT.
I would lastly like to bemoan the prevalence of dance acts and singers on BGT. Sorry, but a synchronised group of people (in or out of water) moving to music (music which seems to conform to a generic style) is no longer as entertaining for us as those participating, who have "worked so hard". To all those who, when questioned, say "it would be like a dream come true" to explain what winning would mean, I suggest developing some creativity in answering the dumb-ass questions posed by presenters.
So, two more nights to go, then the final on Saturday. The dog stands a good chance, as do the XXXXL opera singers. Fortunately we won't see the organist, the xylophone player, the percussionist and some other musicians who (whilst technically excellent - and I do recall a female violinist and a chap on the piano who was rejected before the semis) can't ever really hope to capture the public's imagination in the same way as someone with a wonderful voice or unusual talent. What does grate on me is that the 'variety' aspect seems so often to lose out; I believe that singers, whether groups or individuals, should be banned from BGT if they have the option to enter X-Factor. BGT is a platform for real variety, and really singers below 16 or those singing non-X-Factor music should be the only ones allowed.
Let's see what Wed & Thu bring us.
...
No comments:
Post a Comment