‘It’s only a bit of fun, just a distraction for Cowell’s sake, calm down. You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to.’
Really, I don’t?
Well, excuse me but if a programme is on a quarter of my 16 channels for a good proportion of the week, be talked about in the office every day, be splashed across Twitter and Facebook feeds by normally sane people and have at least one front page dedicated to it each and every day between now and Christmas than it will, inevitably, impinge on my life.
So while the world is on the verge of financial ruin, I’ll be learning how Janet Devlin has gone on ‘a wonderful journey of self-discovery, overcoming her shyness to emerge from her shell and yada yada yada…’
I am already dreading the next time when I'll have to sit down in a group and have to watch another of these re-hashed narratives play out. I have no problem with people enjoying the show; it's just that they're wrong.
A gag reflex is the logical only response when watching Louise Walsh’s smarmy little gimlet eyes telling us that the last act that he'd gotten to perform another song from his Now That's What I Call Music box-set was ‘amazing’ or having to watch Kelly Rowland jumping up and down in a perfect metaphor of her future career, or the unpronounceable one trying to be Cheryl Cole to get the next L’Oreal gig. As for Gary Barlow, the man responsible for more dross than Bros, well, he’s just a prick with a script.
But that’s just the pointless sniping, why be angry over a television show?
Well, because X Factor is changing the music industry before our very eyes, morphing it from a creative art into an entertainment industry. In response to piracy, the music industry has had to shift its focus to make its money, and it's shifted inexorably to television with its steady flow of advertising and opportunities for merchandise. And it's no coincidence that the same companies own both the major TV channels and music labels. Oh, and all the same papers that splash those insipid stories across the front pages.
It's not a conspiracy, it's not some grandiose plan to dumb-down the population to sell it stuff; it’s just another method of making money. Coincidentally by dumbing down the population and selling it stuff. Even though it’s not a conspiracy, it is true to say that there is no more manipulative show on television, and probably never has been.
It begins months before the actual auditions start. Producers sift through thousands of tapes, picking out the weird, the talented and the mentally ill. Each is a different level of horrible. The weird, represented here in Ireland by Jedward, are probably the most suited for the show. The talented, like Leona Lewis, are the disappointing ones, as these are the beautiful voices about to be re-packaged into a dirge of mediocrity. The mentally ill, this year’s example being Ceri Rees, are the most disturbing.
It's well known that producers and judges bring their own acts to the auditions, including at least two of the examples above, skipping passed the people waiting behind the barriers. It’s, in short, only half true that it’s an audition show – a lot of the ‘talent’ has already been discovered.
So, like a giant game of 'Guess Who?' the producers slot each contestant into their required place, neatly dividing the audience along typical demographic lines. They then begin testing out the narratives on the audience, plugging their stories to see which ones will stick. Amazingly, there'll be leaks coming out every Tuesday morning, just enough to get over the hump of the gap between the shows, with particular emphasis on who's bitchy and who's shy at the beginning, before ramping up towards romantic involvements in the later shows.
The relationships between judges and their assigned contestants will be teased out, another piece of fake drama to add to the stew, while the judges themselves will be portrayed as hating each other, with incredibly quotable quotes conveniently showing up in the press, even though these are some of the most private people in the industry at all other times.
It's amazing what Louis Walsh can and can't keep secret.
But let’s get to the heart of what the show portrays itself to be about, music. X Factor has changed the way popular music is bought and sold. The integrated media of today, where every media outlet is ultimately owned by only a few companies, means that massive campaigns are hooked around the X Factor. Record companies, largely linked to the show, use the huge audience figures to plug their artists’ latest album, while ex-contestants release their new album of cover tracks during the shows cycle.
This blandness packaged as cutting edge, these personalities created from a template, the never ending repetition, this will all take place against the background of musicians that just want to create and sell records for the pure joy of it. They don't get any of the money - the way we reward artists for their talent - that goes elsewhere.
And this is why X Factor is capable of ruining music, and it's our fault. By and large, we steal good music. Go on, admit it, we do. But people that watch the X Factor spend fortunes on phone calls to support their favourite and, fair play to them, actually buy their records. All we do is complain about the price of concert tickets when that band that you downloaded five of their albums for free comes to town.
X Factor is the music's industry reaction to piracy. What started as a genius idea for a talent show has become a cornerstone on how the music industry produces and sells music to us. It absorbs money into a central source through advertising, merchandise and record sales, all while cutting out the middleman, or as they used to be known, musicians.
Watch it if you enjoy it. It's good to have something that rolls around each year that you can chat about and be able to wile away boring weekend nights to. But if you like music in all its forms, and appreciate artists creating music for your enjoyment and want them to continue to do so, then buy a record and help Fuck the X Factor.
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