The cult of popularity

Okay, so July's nearly over. But here at orfeo Productions we are proud to present you with what may prove to be the first in a series of lunchtime blogposts. I'm trying to cut back on home computer use - more about that later maybe - and lunchtime is the obvious alternative. On the days I'm not playing chess, that is.

Television shows without scripts are always proliferating because they're much cheaper to make. The latest trend seems to be making shows about celebrities doing something other than what they're famous for - and it's especially trendy to pair each celebrity up with an expert in the relevant field.

Here in Australia we've 'enjoyed' several seasons of a dancing show, which apparently has rated through the roof. Right now we have celebrities trying their hands at singing duets and ice skating.

Now, I don't in principle have an objection to these shows. I''ll always prefer shows that are seeking genuine talent - there was a dancing show on our government-owned network that was fantastic but ultimately not a ratings winner - but it can be quite interesting to discover that an actress from a soapie is rather good at the foxtrot, or that a news presenter's got a decent singing voice.

No, what I object to is letting the audience vote on who stays and who goes, because they can't be trusted to have an ounce of sense.

You might think audience voting is problematic in a show like Idol, but it's not so bad. Without preconceived notions about the contestants, the majority of people will in fact have some kind of rational basis for adopting one contestant as their favourite. Make the contestants celebrities, though, and rationality goes out the window.

Right now in the ice skating, the audience is protecting a presenter from a holiday TV show. He's young, good-looking and has exactly the larrikin attitude that makes Australian girls swoon and Australian guys secretly hope he dates their sister. So, as far as the voting is concerned, it doesn't matter that on ice he looks about as graceful as a cow trying to rollerblade. The audience makes sure through their input into the scoring system that those nasty, horrible professional judges that keep giving him very low scores can't actually get him ejected.

This is hardly an isolated incident. One of Australia's favourite actors shuffled around the dancing show like an escapee from the local nursing home, but he outlasted the majority of his less famous rivals. Just because he was alreadly popular for doing something else entirely.

It's all made even more painful to watch by the iron-clad belief of live audiences that everybody should get ridiculously high scores. They cheer wildly for a 7 or 8 out of 10 for the person who deserves it, but they also boo and hiss for a 5 out of 10 for a mediocre performance, with no thought to whether it was in fact as good as the other one. The presenters/commentators gush over every performance unless it's impossible to do so (usually because the contestant fell over, which is hard to ignore), leaving it to the judges to point out what any impartial observer could see.

I'm surrounded by a continent full of millions of people incapable of critical thought. Words can't describe how much this frightens me sometimes.