As if I cannot pull myself away from watching "America's Got Talent" each year, the darned show strikes again, with moments of stupidity that are simply inexplicable.
Obviously there is plenty of stupidity in the acts themselves, but that is part of the attraction of the show, when people get on stage and do stupid things, like dress up in a caterpillar suit and writhe on stage. It ain't art, and it certainly ain't talent either. But we sit at home and laugh at that.
Then comes the stupidity of the judges themselves, when they start fawning over acts that are 2018 versions of the "Emperor's New Clothes", calling something good that simply is not, for reasons that fail the audience that knows better.
Unfortunately that occurs very often with children's acts, including the winner of a couple years ago, a ukulele-playing 12-year-old who sang like a whispery 10-year-old and was voted the winner (if you can believe the voting, and I don't), after the judges fawned over her for her five or six performances despite no discernible talent worthy of their comments.
And so it happened this past week, with a young lady of 13 or so named Courtney Hadwin. She bashfully addressed the judges first, mentioning her stage fright, and then proceeded to do a "song" by Janis Joplin. I say "to do" as opposed to "to sing", because there was no actual singing involved. I mean, here, look for yourselves.
That was nothing more than running around a stage and screaming for a minute and a half. Right? It can't be just me.
The judges, of course, raved about her and how wonderful she was. Howie Mandel, who one would think should know better, hit the special buzzer that lets the girl avoid the next round of competition and eliminations and go straight to the live shows, where the national audience votes on whom to stay in the competition.
What am I missing, people?
There was no actual "talent" displayed in that performance. Now, I confess to not being any kind of fan of Janis Joplin, but what she did was an act, and in the context of the time in which she lived, however briefly, and performed, it sort of made sense -- as an act, not as music. At least we know she wanted a color TV and a Mercedes-Benz.
This was different. Now, I've written about the problem with acts that are "covering" a previous act. Whatever message the original performer was giving out, the covering performer loses because their message is "See, I can imitate Performer X", not "I feel this or that."
Accordingly, I watch an act for what it tells me ... itself. I did not recognize the piece that this girl was doing as a Janis Joplin piece, partly because I couldn't identify anything she was screaming, partly because I don't know Janis Joplin's works enough to recognize anything much, and partly because the act itself was such a turn-off.
So I watched it for what it was worth, and what I saw was a 13-year-old girl running around a stage screaming.
Well, I don't enjoy people running around screaming, and I certainly don't think of it as any form of "art." And I certainly don't think that it involves any kind of "talent", which is the third word in, you know, the name of the show. So you would kind of expect that successful contestants would have some.
And I still can't figure out how we have a show called "America's Got Talent", but half the televised acts are not Americans but are from foreign performers who don't live here, and who are judged by four judges, none of whom is an American. Go figure,
I have no earthly idea what will happen in the upcoming weeks, because I also thought the ukulele-playing 12-year-old would not survive the audience voting, and she ended up winning somehow. So I'm not going to guess a bloody thing.
But I do have to ask myself what the judges were thinking as they watched that performance on stage, or at least what they had ingested in the hours immediately previous.
Because I sure don't think it was just I who doesn't want to see that act again.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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