Talent Competitions

How often have you heard the judges in talent competitions say that the competitors are so great this year it's going to be difficult to judge a winner? Sometimes they'll just be being nice. Sometimes they'll have a point. They'll certainly have a point in competitions where people are judged against disparate sub-disciplines. Recent examples are this year's BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, which pits sopranos against baritones.

The end choice is often arbitrary, and thus up to the whims of the judges and the political atmosphere of the time. No matter how professional the judges are, they're still just humans. Humans have (and are affected by other people's) biases. The less easy it is to judge an apple against a pear, the more the judge will be tempted (not even consciously) to rely on those biases. And that renders the result irrelevant, unless the goal of the competition is merely to use PR in order to win over the judges' personal likes. But then, people watching the competition don't want to know what the judges prefer, they want to know "who's best" - whatever that means. Judging specifics and extremities in art is easy: A child's picture is not as good (from an artistic point of view) as a Picasso - unless you're judging the childishness of art, I suppose, but that would be straining to prove a point.

Or you judge people based on what others think as well? Is a Metacritic-style judgment fairer? Even that might be frought with political biases, this time on a Eurovision standard (although hopefully far tamer).

So, why judge a winner at all? If the finalists really are difficult to choose from, and they're so disparate in their talents that you're essentially comparing different arts, why not declare them all the winner, or none? The only answer seems to be because, just like with a film you've got to have a montage, with a competition you've got to have a single winner. It's the focal point of the whole competition, and it's what draws in the viewers, gives them interest through the series of rounds until they get to The Big One.

"It's just a bit of fun," you might think. But in some cases, competitions are a part of someone's livelihood. Winning a competition can be akin to gaining a qualification, as far as the birth and progression of their career is concerned. Is it fair to tell someone that they're not as good as someone else, when in reality that's just someone's opinion rather than a provable reflection of reality? Just because an opinion is presented as a fact doesn't make it one, but that's irrelevant because people believe and treat it as such.

And so we've arrived at the truth: Those who fail to win were put through that mental hardship merely for people's entertainment. Is that what we should be doing, as a mature, organised society, and one that claims to take mental health seriously?