So its five
in the morning and for reasons that escape my sleep deprived brain I am still
awake, I’m not particularly happy about it and yet here I am tired, frustrated and
bored. Unfortunately this is nothing new to me as thanks to some random
neurological screw up every couple of weeks I have a few days where I get very
little sleep. I have gotten used to this
little quirk of mine and try and use the time wisely. Tonight I didn’t, tonight
I watched some crap on TV (well that’s a lie I watched new Peep Show and
thoroughly enjoyed it though that’s probably not relevant) and browsed the
internet, not really looking at anything just clicking on whatever captured
my attention, I read a hilarious piece about Noah’s Ark being real and another
about a Judge that sentenced somebody to ten years of going to church, again
hilarious, eventually I stumbled upon an article written by Binky Felstead,
whom people may know from Made In Chelsea. The title of the piece was “When Did
It Become A Crime To Be Well Brought Up?” which seemed quite interesting so I
was duped into reading. Before I go further I must stress I had no idea who she was so I had
know idea what I was about to read. The main intention of the “article" was to
complain about the treatment of these TV
“Stars” we have today that don’t actually do anything at all and get paid
ridiculous money for it. In the article she quotes critics of shows of
this ilk with barbs like “MIC colleagues and I are 'gilded socialites',
'spray tanned exhibitionists', and 'privately educated, hedonistic' youngsters
whose lives are a 'seemingly endless jaunt around London's most exclusive bars,
restaurants and health clubs'.”
and then
asks the hard hitting question: “When did it become a crime to be well
brought up in financial comfortable circumstances and be lucky enough to attend
a good school or university?”
Already she has implied that
there is a link between being “well brought up” and money which just plain
wrong not to mention offensive. Ask any parent working two jobs to keep food on
the table, any parent that scrimps and saves all year to see their kids faces
on Christmas day. Ask them if they feel they have failed their kids because
they couldn’t make themselves rich but I would stand a few paces back if I were
you. In fairness I think she has just misjudged why these people are hated,
that’s where I would like to offer my services, I feel I could clarify a few
things and as sleep alludes me what else have I got to do.
“Do the stars of any
other TV show get treated this way? By that I mean like stereotyped, gormless
mannequins for other people's class prejudices and bias. Well yes, actually,
they do.”
This is her next question, a perfectly reasonable one at
first glance I mean who wants to be stereotyped gormless mannequins for other…
hang on that doesn’t make sense. She may
be trying to say that she feels like she has been unfairly stereotyped just for
other peoples prejudices, not really getting it though. The whole selling point
of these kind of shows is Reality, its all about reality these days. This means
that the entire show has been created around these people and their reality.
The saying “if you dress like a slag” springs to mind. These people have control
over how they are perceived just like we all do and if you don’t want to be
viewed as a shallow narcissistic cretin maybe it’s a good idea not to act like
one on national television. It all gets better from here though, now The
Only Way Is Essex gets its time to shine and again its about class
prejudices only this time its reversed, they are apparently hated for being “acquisitive,
nouveau rich wannabes, desperately trying to get rich.” again I believe these
are the words of critics. In her eyes these people are hypocrites as she states
“Hang on, can you have it both ways? For what it's worth, I don't think so.
It's lazy, narrow-minded and backwards looking.” Which is true but again I feel
she has missed the point, I’ll get to that I promise.
The next paragraph is
basically defending the place she lives and I understand that, my city is a
shit hole but its my little shit hole and if you don’t live there you can’t
judge it. I assume a lot of people would defend the place they live and I have
no opinion of Chelsea at all really other than the football team. She gleefully
name drops famous artists, writers and other bohemian characters such as
Singer Sargent and Oscar Wilde ( why
would you put those names in this sort of article, I mean Oscar Wilde, really)
that have lived in or around Chelsea, trying to use these names to gain some
credibility with those arty types that were long ago booted out, the riff raff
are good for some light entertainment but you wouldn’t want them around all the
time would you, imagine the house prices. Next comes one of my favourite terms
ever used in the English language, reverse snobbery, oh yes the cousin of
reverse racism has reared its ugly head. The feeling rich people get when the
spend some time with the common folk, its not reverse snobbery, its jealousy
and if rich people can’t deal with it then they should give all their money
away now, I’ll look after it for them. You can’t expect people to come home
from working a fourteen hour day knowing that they are still going to struggle
to make the mortgage, flip on the TV only to see people on a reality TV show
being portrayed (wrongly or not) in the way these shows do and expect them to
be filled with joy, if I watched that trash I’d end up putting my foot throw
the screen.
At the
end of the article she leaves us on an inspiring and uplifting note, “People
are either classy or they aren't, it's that simple and birth, money and
position really doesn't come into it.” its just unfortunate that its utterly
wrong. Of course the family your born into affects you social standing just as
clearly as your families financial situation effects it. Sadly she is
right about something, there is a huge class dived in this country and as long as it continues
the rich will sstill protect their own little world while the poor try and escape
theirs.
The
hate that shows like Made in Chelsea stirs up though doesn’t stem from this class war
because in the grand scheme of things these shows are barely a blip, they
will come and go and be forgotten before even I have died, assuming I have an
average enough life that is, lets not tempt fate. Off i go on a ramble, where was I, the Class divide has been around for a little longer than Made in Chelsea, only a few hundreds of years more and i'd be willing to bet that poor people haven't particularly liked entitled people for most of that time. No this hatred comes from a more depressing place, from the
lie we were fed as children, you can get anything you want if you work hard
enough. Its simply and sadly not true.
You don’t see Lord Allen Sugar or Sir
Richard Branson getting the same sort of stick these “socialites” get and there
is a good reason for that, they are the personification of “the dream” for most
people, normal people come good through hard graft. They are viewed in this way
because they make sure they are portrayed like this. No one begrudges a hard working
man or women the bread that they earned themselves but they despise brats fed
with silver spoons. Made in Chelsea and TOWIE exemplify this, there is no
talent on the screen, no achievement, nothing and yet there they are rubbing
salt into the wounds by churning out poor TV and being paid more money than brain cells.
I wrote this mainly
because it really got to me that such a poorly written, out of touch and
pointless diatribe (admittedly the same
could be said about this but I haven’t slept for thirty hours so that’s my
excuse) could get published purely because of who she is. We have our idols all
wrong these days and now I’ve had my little rant I can sleep easy (though I
probably won’t) content with the knowledge I’ve tried to do something even if
it is in vain and to paraphrase Hunter S Thompson I can continue humping the dream
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