Who won Nigel or Russell? The x-factorisation of politics

****

Like most of the British population I didn't watch the Nigel Farage and Russell Brand show on last night's BBC Question Time. I have now watched the popular clip of a bloke in the audience asserting that if Brand was so keen on changing things maybe he might consider standing for parliament. And I've also read selections from the avalanche of commentary about this occasion.

However, I remain - politcally at least - depressed about the whole thing. Not because of the opinions that Nigel and Russell express - I like people to have opinions, even wrong ones. My sense of gloom stems from the nature of the programme and the way in which our national (and state-owned) broadcaster presents politics. Question Time is the BBC's flagship political debate show, yet they run it as if it was part of their light entertainment offering. Which is why getting Farage and Brand on the same show was important - not because they offer thoughtful and considered analysis of complex questions but because they have a 'brand' (pun entirely intended).

And the media entirely buy into this x-factorisation of political debate - the reporting of Question Time isn't about what anyone said except where it's couched in terms of who 'won' between the two personalities. In the Metro, that throwaway newspaper we read on the train the report even ends with a vote!

Won what exactly? The argument - surely the point of the show isn't to have a winner but rather to allow politicians (and people who aren't politicians but have something to say - like Brand, I guess) a place to respond to questions from an audience. Indeed there were five panellists not just the two - or should I call them contestants?

Even the questions selected last night played to this artificial contest - starting with the 'petty, adversarial nature of politics' (a deliciously ironic question given the petty and adversarial nature of this edition of Question Time) we then ran through privatising the NHS, immigration and grammar schools. A set of question designed to provide some entertaining exchanges between our two protagonists.

Yesterday was a particularly stark example of how politics is treated as a branch of entertainment but we shouldn't think that it is unusual. Indeed the majority of political discussion that we see is either so brief - a two or three minute interview on the Today programme or Newsnight or else structured so as to guarantee contest and confrontation - even when people are crammed onto a too small sofa. The result is that nearly all of political debate is conducted on the basis of sound bite, posture and slogan, which rather explains why a jack-the-lad comedian like Russell Brand finds it so easy - there isn't much different between his political exposition and his stand-up.

On one level I guess this doesn't really matter - we get the politicians and the political debate we deserve. But we should consider what we are losing. In the dumbed down, lights-flashing, show biz world of today's politics there isn't any place for nuance, for looking at the actual evidence (other than trite 'fact-checking') or for trying to explain complicated systems, situations or proposals. And there is no time given for developing ideas, exploring options or properly examining proposals. I know this stuff happens because I do it every day as a councillor but the politics we're presented with by the media is almost entirely one of personalities, of who's up and who's down, gossip, tittle-tattle and the machine-gunning of listeners with carefully crafted slogans.

Which is why I don't watch BBC Question Time, seldom see Newsnight and can only manage very brief snatches of the Today Programme - all they offer is argument without substance, snarky interviewers and the constant idea that all these interactions must somehow have a winner and a loser. The political parties - and the gossip-mongers of the media - pour over the utterings of every politician looking for the clumsy phrase, the hesitation or the words than might offend some group or other. We're routinely presented with allegations of sexism and racism constructed on the flimsiest of grounds. Why? Because it's another win for the opposition or for one or other newspaper or website.

This game - slogans, soundbites and poses mixed with back-biting and character assassination - makes politics seem like, as Paul Begala observed, show business for the ugly. It doesn't matter much whether the actual policies actually work, that can be glossed over. What matters is who wins and who loses. Not just at the election (at least that's a real contest) but in every engagement and encounter. We pull down the opponent - focus on their silly face, their school or their resemblance to Parker from Thunderbirds - rather than engage with what they are saying.

Whatever the truth, it really is pretty sad that the presentation of politics has reached this point - a sort of x-factor for the political anorak rather than a way of helping the public understand what politicians are actually proposing. Perhaps Russell Brand and Nigel Farage - inconsistent, flash blokes from the edges of London with the gift of the gab and a degree of likeability - really do represent the future of politics. After all they don't offer positive policies, just lists of things they don't want and people they don't like.

....

X-Factor isn't ruining the music business - that pass was sold before Simon Cowell was born!

On one level X-Factor is the encapsulation of the entertainment business’s shimmering deceptiveness – thousands of “hopefuls” are whittled down to a final few from which one “winner” is chosen. And that winner is chosen by the public – this is victory for the market. Or is it?

Last year I pointed out that Simon Cowell’s modus operandum was to exploit what I called the “Bestseller Syndrome” – to take advantage of our tendency to follow the herd. Especially when it comes to matters of taste. Now some see this as some sort of indictment for the music industry – symbolising how Simon and his demon hordes manipulate our choices for their own profit.

We suppose, I guess, that unscrupulous business-minded impresarios are some kind of modern invention? That the entertainment business has somehow been corrupted by Simon Cowell’s evil manipulation leaving us with less than we had before? But this is not new – we can go back into history:

The company owners, wrote the young United Company employee Colley Cibber, "who had made a monopoly of the stage, and consequently presum'd they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people, did not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave a set of actors whom the public were inclined to support." Performers like the legendary Thomas Betterton, the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry, and the rising young comedienne Anne Bracegirdle had
the audience on their side and, in the confidence of this, they walked out.

The actors gained a Royal "licence to perform", thus bypassing Rich's ownership of both the original Duke's and King's Company patents from 1660, and formed their own cooperative company. This unique venture was set up with detailed rules for avoiding arbitrary managerial authority, regulating the ten actors' shares, the conditions of salaried employees, and the sickness and retirement benefits of both categories. The cooperative had the good luck to open in 1695 with the première of William Congreve's famous Love For Love and the skill to make it a huge box-office
success.

London again had two competing companies. Their dash to attract audiences briefly revitalized Restoration drama, but also set it on a fatal downhill slope to the lowest common denominator of public taste. Rich's company notoriously offered Bartholomew Fair-type attractions — high kickers, jugglers, ropedancers, performing animals — while the cooperating actors, even as they appealed to snobbery by setting themselves up as the only legitimate theatre company in London, were not above retaliating with "prologues recited by boys of five, and epilogues declaimed by ladies on horseback".

This manipulation of public taste is a feature of entertainment and has been an especial feature of the music industry – whether we talk of the song factories of Tin Pan Alley, the mob connections of the swing era or Berry Gordy’s Motown business, we see exploitative businessmen taking advantage of ambitious performers (and particularly singers). A moment looking at the contract disputes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and, come to think of it, just about every top performing artist of the 1960s and 1970s reveals the Faustian deal most performers enter into with promoters – sign here and we make you rich but only so long as you do what we want you to do.

I’m not sure Simon Cowell is of an honourable tradition – although his understanding of what the public will buy is essential. Just as Berry Gordy sustained Motown on the (very cheap) unique sound created by his in-house backing band, Simon Cowell works from a limited palette in terms of music. There is not a “Cowell Sound” but it is striking to see how most of the performers who get through to the public votes in X-Factor conform to a limited set of stereotypes – strong female singers usually black or mixed race, pretty young boys (singly or in groups) with light voices but a degree of sex appeal and slightly scruffy blokes with high voices.

This is the Cowell model and the performers are them squeezed into a lowest-common-denominator approach by recycling songs from within the bounds of expectation. The focus is on the money note, the song choice and “movement” leaving some songs destroyed by the need to fit in a ‘top C’ or wailing arpeggio. But we’ve always known this sells – plenty of opera scores were fiddled with so the big stars could have their note and Cowell merely continues this tradition (albeit with less good singers).

We should not moan about X-Factor spoiling the music industry – that spoiling was done long before Simon Cowell was born. Instead, we should wonder at how fantastic singers, musicians and composers still get success without selling their souls to the “industry” – like this! Or for that matter…this!

Who needs Simon Cowell!

....

Simon Cowell and the bestseller syndrome

****

Now all the hoo-hah about this year’s Christmas number one record is over, I thought I’d take a rather more sideways look. Plenty of others have loudly proclaimed the (frankly rather ludicrous) politics of the campaign, a further set have seen it as a big dig at Simon Cowell for his terrible crime of making huge amounts of money from selling other people’s music and others – perhaps more quietly – have just gone out and bought the dreadful dirge that Mr Cowell is flogging to us this Christmas.

Instead of taking sides in the Joe vs. “Rage Against the Machine” debate (for the record I can’t work out which record I dislike the most); I thought I’d look at how Simon Cowell – and others in the music business – exploits what we might call the “bestseller syndrome”.

The “bestseller syndrome” is where we are more inclined to buy something because it is (or has been described as) a bestseller. Mail order marketers have known this for years – and when we say know in mail order we mean that we have tested it and shown that we get a measurably better response from calling something a bestseller than when we say nothing. And Cowell makes great use of this syndrome – watch how the guest acts on X-Factor are always introduced as “best-selling” artists and at how past volumes of records shifted is the central predictor of future success.

The new artists created by X-Factor are made to be bestsellers from the outset – none of this tedious audience-building is needed since the x-factor Christmas record is a bestseller. Throughout the programme the focus is on selling records – for the past year or two a charity record by the X-Factor finalists has been a feature thereby creating another number one record, another bestseller.

The point about the bestseller – and the psychological truth that Simon Cowell exploits – is that we are drawn to the safety of the bestseller. Just as in times past “nobody got fired for buying IBM”, we scuttle to the safety of numbers and buy the mass-produced tunes that Simon Cowell and others present as “popular music”. Indeed, this approach to music isn’t new as anyone reading the history of Motown (Berry Gordy is feted now but was a very similar businessman to Cowell) or the song factories of Tin Pan Alley would know. And we have always had a choice and the artists or song writers have always had a choice. We can either buy something else or nothing at all. And the artists can – as Gershwin did, as Elvis did, as the Beatles did and as Will Young appears to have done – the artists can break away from the production line once their name and fame are set.

But in truth we will return to the bestsellers – Simon Cowell and whoever comes after him in the popular music business will carry on manufacturing music and using brands and the bestseller to create a new generation of artists to “exploit”. And with each renewed generation there is a backlash – a call for “independent” music, for authenticity, for artistic control. And this backlash – taking advantage of the spirit of youthful (and not so youthful) rebellion – will see some artists and writers become rich and famous enough to achieve the accolade of “sell-out”. At which point they can appear as guests on X-Factor!

And tell me how many set out to be rock stars without even a passing thought for the cash?
...