 |
|
August 18, 2007
The Light Of Aspiration Needs Its Bulb Changing
I got lost on the way back from the library and ended up walking past the Emirates Stadium. Oh good, I thought, Highbury Station must be nearby and I can get the tube into town and won’t be late for the Bolshoi rehearsal. Outside the stadium was a film crew. Oh, God, I thought: all that starting up again. Hours and hours and hours of it all over the TV. (I’ve just signed up for Virgin’s Three For Thirty package and got Sky TV apropos, so could now watch Football, Will And Grace and Most Haunted all day every day.)
“But not one broadcast of the Bolshoi Ballet in the best form ever”, I said aloud, getting a look from some teens wearing Arsenal shirts.
Why do football supporters feel the need to wear their team’s kit? Balletomanes don’t wear tutus. And what’s all this “we” business as in, forgive me if I simplify here, “We should have kicked the ball more in the other team’s goal?” You don't hear balletomanes saying, “We should have been more on straight legs underneath with more epaulement on top and not overdone the ruffling of the imaginary wing feathers.”
“Not one…”, I said again, stopping to a packet of reds only Starburst from a kiosk.
Later, when I saw that in an ad for a pizza restaurant the model licking her finger was grimacing and that in an advert for a gym the model had the greyish colouring that Mrs. Thompson (Sue) will tell you is a sign that blood is not getting to the skin and death’s sting is unsheathed, it hit me. Even advertisers don’t want us to aspire any more. This pizza isn’t very nice and you’ll look like a steroidal zombie if you go to this gym. They’ve caught on that telling us that something is excellent will make us pass on it.
For me, it’s all in the TV personalities. We used to have the likes of Sister Wendy. Now we have the disgusts of Jade Goody. And, follow me here, we have Jade Goody Does Opera in the form of Katherine Jenkins et al, following in the wake of the Channel 4 programme Operatunity where we were led to believe that it was possible to train opera singers to a standard of excellence without nine years of slog.
Bull, Madame, bull…
The Bolshoi Ballet is a last bastion. Fast track a Nikya to Zakharova’s standard, or Lunkina’s? No. And the proof that we are not all born equal and that some go so far as to strive are what would make it unpalatable viewing for the ignorant.
And we wouldn’t want any misaiming of Jade Goody Plump And Pouty Glitter Lip Gloss, would we?
 |
 | ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
| ||||||||