And This Is How We Have Singers Who Rise To Fame on the Usual Vocal Skills...

.... you know, physical beauty or dance ability.
(Intonation? Nah, fuggedaboudit, we got auto-tune for that.)

Take a look at this, Andrew Balio's indictment of the standard-free education in the arts that is being pushed by some, (well, objective standards, anyway, are being thrown to the wind.)

He writes from the POV of musicians, but the plastic arts are leading the way.

Music conservatories have until now largely resisted the impulses that have transformed our art schools. But art schools long ago succumbed to the delusion that sets creativity and originality ahead of discipline. They long ago embraced the widespread cultural rebellion against tradition in all its forms; generations ago they rejected the practice of “teaching as it was taught to me.” They have effectively broken with the past. They’re even wildly successful at turning out entrepreneurs: modern artists are now rolling their “art” off of assembly lines straight into museums. A 2011 Wall Street Journal article by Stan Sesser, “The Art Assembly Line” described this phenomenon:

Alexander Gorlizki is an up-and-coming artist…[whose] work has been displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Denver Art Museum and Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, among others, and sells for up to $10,000. Mr. Gorlizki lives in New York City. The paintings are done by seven artists who work for him in Jaipur, India. “I prefer not to be involved in actually painting,” says Mr. Gorlizki, who adds that it would take him 20 years to develop the skills of his chief Indian painter, Riyaz Uddin. “It liberates me not being encumbered by the technical proficiency,” he says.

We don’t have to squint to see where this road that our reformers are rushing down ends. Indeed we are fortunate to have such an explicit example to study. Before we bid our conservatories follow our art schools into the great modern experiment, then, we ought to ask ourselves—and consider carefully—whether or not the experiment has been successful.

Movies and musicals are assembled by committees and focus groups, cuteness counts, and PR trumps beauty. With Scrooge, I'll retire to Bedlam.