Why Susan Boyle Doesn’t Matter
I finally broke down over the weekend and watched the Susan Boyle performance that everyone's been plotzing over. For those of you that don't know, Boyle is the, as my grandmother would generously say, "plain-looking" 47-year-old Scottish spinster whose lovely performance on April 11th of "I Dreamed A Dream" on Britain's Got Talent has turned her into an international sensation, garnering tens of millions of YouTube views and generating all manner of pontificating on the meaning of her popularity. We're dealing with an ugly duckling tale. That's it. Susan Boyle is by conventional pop standards, unattractive, but sings like an angel, and her notoriety, as the thinking goes, is thus a heartwarming rebuke to an entertainment culture that far too often values looks rather than skill. If this episode sounds familiar, it's because it is--Britain's Got Talent spawned the exact same story two years ago when Paul Potts, a stocky cell-phone store manager, won the competition on the strength of his renditions of tenor arias like "Nessun Dorma." Your mother may have emailed you about him.
Of course, fairy tales are fiction. Potts' success did not result in a radical restructuring of show business norms (though his debut album, One Chance, did go double platinum in the U.K.)--extremely attractive entertainers are still more likely to get the good gigs. Susan Boyle's moment will have a similarly unremarkable effect. For all the back patting (see, we're not superficial!) her moment has allowed us to indulge in, the fact remains that popular entertainment is largely about helping us escape the mundane, whether it's for two hours or the length of a YouTube clip. And it's a lot easier to do that when the person doing the entertaining doesn't look like a crazy cat lady who lives next door. Right now Susan Boyle is an exception. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking she's going to be the rule.
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She will not soon be forgotten !
but in the USA we give the underdogs a chance, and like to see them win occasionally.
I'd rather see my kids admire Susan Boyle over Britney Spears anyday of the week.
No, Susan Boyle does not matter..... but neither do you.
I might remember Susan Boyles' name - but not yours.
tkf
But thanks for pointing out the obvious.
We appreciate it!
Now, Grandma's paintings are each worth at least $100,000. I think it is great that people can discover their talents no matter how they look and how old they are. Everybody has some talent that no body else has, they just have to develop it.
trying to "redo" that real moment with Boyle with other fakey such moments which are not working! Susan Boyle will sing whether we or anyone else puts her on the "pop" world stage or not! And she is a REAL talent of voice whether we like her looks or not. Paul, by the way, is now a millionaire whether he's gorgeous or not. Both Susan and Paul are genuine in their own right with or without the judge crew on BGT.