Sir Thomas Beecham once said, “The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.” And, if you’ll just give them a year or so, the Royal Opera House intends to prove that Beecham was absolutely correct. Sometime in 2011, the same creative team who brought you Jerry Springer: The Opera and Gaddafi: A Living Myth will unleash Anna Nicole Smith: The Opera to stumble drunkenly onto the stage at Covent Garden and drive a few more nails into the coffin of British cultural superiority. Not that it’s going to be tawdry, mind you. Just listen to Elaine Padmore, Covent Garden’s director of opera:
It is not going to be tawdry, it is going to be witty, clever, thoughtful and sad…. It will tell the story of her life, the people who influenced her, her progress.”
Right. Because Anna Nicole’s rise from Playboy bunny to litigious gold-digger to drug-addled mess, ending in a prescription-drug crash landing, will inspire you, uplift you–and, above all, make you think. Lord knows there are several areas where I won’t pretend America is superior to the Brits–takeout food, for one; reality shows, for another. But I hope we don’t try to reclaim cultural parity on this front by letting the Washington National Opera perform Amy Winehouse: The Opera sometime in 2017.
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[...] Will you be going to see the Anna Nicole Smith opera [Agent Bedhead] [...]
Atoz, old chap. Reality television is infinitely worse in the UK than the US.
It is horrifying, and what is yet more horrifying is the extent to which reality TV ‘stars’ become actual stars – as in the stupid paparazzi chase them around (indulging their exhibitionism) and photograph their (usually drunken) antics outside nightclubs.
The only thing I would say is definitely, indisputably better in the UK is grocery store ready-cooked meals, which are just excellent in the UK, and absolutely over-processed nastiness in the US.
And cheese.
Cheese here sucks.
To be fair, I thought reality TV was trying
to be awful. I just think UK reality TV is much better at being awful.
And you’re right about the cheese. But American cheese must be made with pasteurized milk, so it’s required to suck by law. Because we’d hate to see a repeat of Europe’s tragic 1950s outbreak of cheese-related deaths, or something.