Though our careers have diverged over the years, it still bothered me why Foggie did well on Search for a Star, while I would certainly not have. So I began to search for meaning in my rejection and, being a Marxist, I also looked for its significance in terms of class war. This task has become more urgent as programmes such as X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Strictly have come to dominate prime-time viewing. In the documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media Chomsky says the media’s function is to “amuse entertain and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.” Thus the propaganda role of the talent show is to promote the idea of simplicity over complexity, of popularity over talent, of banality over genuine invention because complexity encourages critical thought and critical thought is the enemy of authoritarianism. Or to employ another quote beloved of radicals, it was my distant relation film-maker Albert Mayles who stated: “Tyranny is the removal of nuance.” Now, obviously, dance is not revolutionary in itself; art cannot directly affect politics, and, in fact, politics doesn’t seem able to directly affect politics. The audience from Giselle at London’s Royal Opera House are not going to storm into the streets and seize the telephone exchange no matter how elegant and authentic the performance, but what the celebrities who appear on Strictly are doing is taking part in the ongoing cultural war on critical thinking. Just as in as in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four where “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength” so in Strictly ugliness is beauty, prancing is dancing and Judy Murray is Ginger Rogers. The end result is that when people are confronted by the truth they cannot see it because they have been so confused by lies. theguardian/tv-and-radio/2014/nov/29/alexei-sayle-marxist-demolition-of-strictly-come-dancing?CMP=share_btn_tw
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 22:47:16 +0000
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