The Ugliness of Modern Culture

Susan Boyle. An unremarkable name for a woman with a powerful and melodic voice.

If you saw the first episode of the new series of 'Britain's Got Talent', you'd have witnessed the unedifying sight of a middle-aged Scottish woman amble modestly out onto a stage, in front of a crowd who were eagerly prepared to rip the stinking piss out of her, as soon as they'd appraised her appearance. Once she got her lungs into gear however, they were stunned into silence, presumably thinking, "Holy Ghosts of Mars, this lady can sing." They were as surprised as a cinemagoer would be to see Val Kilmer's facial expression of the last twenty years suddenly change.

Amanda Holden, the lady filling the role of 'the compassionate judge' turned on the tears, driven to them by the overwhelming sight and sound of a fairly plain looking woman singing well. The crowd and judges gave her a standing ovation for her performance, while secretly feeling like complete cunts for equating her looks with the expected inversely proportional quantity of talent.

A question - why would this sight drive someone to tears? Is being ugly the new autism? Is Susan Boyle an 'ugly savant'?

Somewhere along the line, and I'm not saying it's a new phenomenon, one of those strange unwritten rules was erm, unwritten, which states that 'ugly people can have no talent'. To be of less than supermodel looks and make it in today's showbusiness, you have to have an inordinate amount of talent, or appear on a reality TV show, or be a loud and vacuous polemicist.

And even if people of unglamourous appearance do somehow make it into the public eye, they run the risk of being patronised to death. 'Aw, the blind woman can sing', 'Aw, there goes the ugly bastard who can play a piano', 'Awww....Awwww...AWWWW.'

Still, I suppose it's better than being an attractive celebrity being harried at all hours of every day to satisfy the morbid curiosity of people for who's looking fat, who's looking thin, who hasn't got make-up on, who has cellulite, who has a spot, who was caught mid-blink and looks like they've had a massive stroke, and who is suffering from debilitating diseases. The obvious next step for these abysmal weeklies, is poublications devoted to highlighting particular 'flaws'.

When I see 'Celebrity Acnewatch' and 'Anorexic Rib Revealing Death-Verging Star Shots', I'll know it's time to do a Bill Bixby and hitch-hike to sad music up and down A-roads and motorways for the short amount of time before the planet finally gets bored of us and eliminates us.

And it'll be richly deserved, because let's face it, the human race and the noxious stench of modern mass Western culture have no place in a universe where we can view the ethereal beauty of a stellar nursery, of the divergent range of natural phenomona that the Earth has provided, but choose to watch '50 Celebrity Meltdowns' again instead. Hosted by Paul Fucking Ross. FFS.