Industry | 2010.01.01
The X Factor overlord is set to make Jedwards of us all | Marina Hyde
If Cowell\'s idea succeeds, the UK will be one vast reality show with leaders too weak to resist his nightmarish referendums
A "political X Factor", in which hot topics are voted on by members of the public in instant referendums? A red phone in the middle of a shiny floor studio, just daring No 10 to call and explain its position on the death penalty, or why lethal force is not always the right response to the theft of a DVD player? Once again, our thanks are due to Simon Cowell, the first post-sentient human – not for simply showing us the people we could be, but for planning a lucrative deal with ITV that will make it all happen.
Interviewed on Newsnight this week, Cowell sold his putative new show as "a good way for me to get involved in politics", with the casual assurance of a man who knows his involvement in politics has long been the optimal outcome for a society seeking heroes it can believe in.
To those who say the X Factor overlord has left them disillusioned about music, the rejoinder is plain: just think what he could do with politics, with which people are already wildly disillusioned. Alas, many greeted news of his idea with the sort of open-minded naivety they wouldn\'t dream of exhibiting were, say, Rupert Murdoch to suggest the same thing. What would be the harm in it, they wondered , as though asking self-selecting members of public to call money-spinning phone lines and vote yea or nay on some aspect of social policy – then watching as the tabloids with whom the show is symbiotically entwined hound the government to bend to their will – were scarcely a conceptual leap from asking them to rate some averagely talented teenager\'s performance of You Raise Me Up .
And yet, if he persists in this latest venture, how long can anyone continue to see Cowell as monstrous in some ways but ultimately benign? What do they imagine he\'s in it for, since he already has more money than he could spend? Consider the evidence. Simon Cowell is the music mogul who has no apparent love for music, and never listens to it at home. He now wishes to shake up politics and claims Margaret Thatcher as his hero , but has never voted. Put like that, it should seem rather simpler. Simon Cowell is interested in owning the system. And now he owns and controls the global means of pitchy power-ballad production, he covets a stake in national choices bigger even than whether Lloyd or Jedward should go through to the next round.
For all this talk of making politics interesting, it seems unlikely that suddenly becoming a significant player in UK politics will break Simon\'s ballot box duck. Does Rupert Murdoch – whom Cowell claims as his other hero – bother schlepping out to the polling station for US elections? One can\'t imagine it. Why bother when you have the power to affect how millions are cast?
For a flavour of how the karaoke-industrial complex might expand, we have only to look at the synergies already flowering. This week, the winner of Cowell\'s X Factor, Joe McElderry, was the star guest at The Sun\'s Military Awards. According to the paper\'s report , Joe said "his debut was made even more \'special\' because he was singing for the nation\'s very bravest". Among those who obediently trotted along to the bash were David Cameron, who then told radio listeners that he was backing Joe for Christmas No 1 and that politics has much to learn from Cowell , whom he evidently regards as having been added to the list of people too powerful not to fawn over. News Corp, Cowell and whichever government is in power (Brown has been just as obsequious) – is it not the definition of a healthy relationship that could only develop to the betterment of society as a whole?
Anyway, government by phone vote would seem the next logical step for the genre we are still obliged to refer to as unscripted programming, despite its meticulous staging. After all, with the possible exception of McMansions, islands are one of reality TV\'s most enduring tropes, isolated spaces on which producers like to maroon varying combinations of horny bachelorettes/temptation-prone couples/teenage faux survivalists. How apocalyptically inevitable that this septic isle of ours should itself become a reality TV set – that the UK in its entirety will serve as the vast, malfunctioning concept, in which British citizens will be contestants whether they like it or not, seeing as the pressure for any government to respond to the results of Cowell\'s weekly referendums will be nightmarish to resist.
Naturally, Cowell will dismiss the critics of this new idea just as he dismisses those who accuse his talent shows of debasing the public taste: by arguing it is what the public want. Underpinning all his ventures is such a palpably disingenuous veneration of the will of the people that it is both amazing and depressing that he is not challenged more often on it. There are, after all, a million rejoinders to those who justify something by the fact of its popularity – several of them not even mentioning the Third Reich – though at present my favourite comes courtesy of Peep Show\'s Super Hans . "People?" he snorts. "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazi party. You can\'t trust people."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]mon-cowell-xfactor-politics-tv
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