Each summer as the Autumnal Equinox approaches and the nights start
drawing in there's one thing that, for me, holds Seasonal Affective Disorder at
bay. No, it’s not the charming autumn colours or the prospect of festive cheer
on the horizon; it is of course the start of another season of The X Factor. On
Saturday evening it began again in earnest. And I mean earnest. Like a self-promoting
pretitles sequence about SEVEN MINUTES long kind of earnest. It was mostly the
standard helicopter shots of enormous hysterical queues of losers but this year
it was interspersed with a lot of hype about Sharon Osborne being back – they
didn’t say back from the dead but she
does look like a revivified corpse. Albeit a fabulous one. And if she hasn’t
died already the amount of botox in her face will surely kill her soon… Anyway,
it’s back. As the man with the ridiculously deep voice would say, IT'S TIME! TO
FACE!! THE MUSAC!!! And the fact that Louis Walsh is never going to retire.
People who know me and how effortlessly cool I am always assume that my
fondness for The X Factor is somehow ironic. Let me be very clear about this:
it is not ironic. I genuinely love The X Factor. Not in a cool, Guardian X
Factor Live Blog pisstake kinduva way. I actually love it. I love Dermot
O'Leary, I loved Paije Richardson (I know, scandal right?) and I love Nicole
Scherzinger. In fact sometimes I go a bit straight over Scherzinger. Come on,
she is Shamazing.
When I see that giant X-shaped meteor careering towards the earth I get
the kind of warm glow inside that for normal people can only come from watching
a puppy ice skating or from receiving a prolonged session of oral sex. There’s
nothing else quite like it. Well there is, obviously. But they’re not the same.
There’s The Voice but that’s like talent contest methodone – enough to hold off
the headaches and keep me going through the rest of the year but ultimately
unsatisfying.
Admittedly the auditions rounds are a bit rubbish. And a bit
disgustingly exploitative. Personally I don't really like The Crap Ones.
There's something about watching the borderline mentally ill being publicly
humiliated that makes me feel a bit... well... Victorian. I suppose viewers who
do enjoy these bits find watching them gives them the same shameful thrill as,
say, watching pornography or putting a cheese twist through as a bread roll at
the self checkouts in Tesco.
But the live shows are awesome. Or as Scherzinger would probably say
shawsome. The euphoria climaxes with the arrival of the judges to the
absurdly serious O Fortuna (that classical one with monks singing). Sometimes
Dermot does a little dance and I actually ejaculate and have to go and change
my pants. Steve usually takes this opportunity to flick around the channels and
see what else is on, as if I'm gonna come back in and go "Oh is there a
David Attenborough on? Oh well let's leave X Factor, it's all the same
anyway". (Naturally I snatch the remote off him and rebuke him for
demonstrating independent thought. Where would The X Factor be if everyone
started having independent thoughts? The acts would have to start making good
music in order to sell. Simon Cowell would lose all his money and have to live
in a two-up two-down in Tenby. And nobody wants that.)
But there is one thing that troubles me about it all. And that is the
question of why I actually like it. I
mean obviously it's awful. More awful than Miley Cyrus. It is formulaic,
predictable and banal. It's slowly destroying the music industry. It regularly
contains large doses of Gary Borelow for god's sake. Why does my brain allow me
to like it? I can only conclude that they replace one frame in 25 with the
words KEEP WATCHING OR YOUR MUM WILL GET CANCER or that ITV have done a back
room deal with the water companies to pump crack into the water around 8pm on
Saturday nights.
I’ve been presented with a similar conundrum by another television
phenomenon recently: Lost. Yes, I know I'm about 85 million years behind
the curve on this one but a friend of mine recently gave me the DVD box set of
series 1 of Lost (thanks Gillian, for RUINING MY SUMMER!). Ermagherd, it's,
like, dangerously addictive. More addictive than Ritz crackers with peanut
butter. It's also completely ridiculous (POLAR BEARS CANNOT SURVIVE ON DESERT
ISLANDS!!!) but I can't help myself. I am beyond help. A piece of
my brain actually rotted off and fell out of my ear the other day while I was
watching it and I just carried on. And I ACTUALLY CARE about the characters.
SPOILER ALERT I cried like an actual baby when Boone died. I mean I wailed, and
I wet myself and then I sucked my thumb for an hour. Although that was mainly
because he is the most beautiful man in the entire world and I will no longer
be able to look at him regularly. Anyway...
It troubles me. What is the point of having critical faculties at all if
your eyes can just override them and go “Yeah but look, Marcus Collins is
wearing a SHINY JACKET with SEQUINS on - don't change the channel”? But more
worrying still, for anyone hoping to produce anything of any artistic merit,
what really is the point of being good? Why not just produce some drivel with
shiny jackets or a mysterious hatch in the jungle that should have been opened
in episode 2 but which the character stumbling upon has some inexplicable
motivation for not telling anyone about until episode 23? I have no answer to
this question. I was going to think about it and write a conclusion but series
2 of Lost has just finished downloading and I need to know what's in that ruddy
hatch. Maybe it’s Joe McElderry.
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