Susan Boyle is an English, church-worker who lives alone with her cats. She stepped on the stage of the television contest 'Britain's Got Talent' and given her eccentric personality and unattractive appearance, the audience and the judges assumed that this would be another horribly cringe-worthy quest for fame on national TV. How wrong they were. Ms. Boyle opened her mouth to sing 'I dreamed a dream' and the voice of an angel came out. The audience was shocked, some moved to tears by this performance.
Since the airing of the show, a video clip of Ms. Boyle's performance has become all the rage on YouTube. It seems millions of us are shocked with Boyle's appearance could actually have something beautiful about her. The press seems to have latched onto this and are trying to make it into a feel-good story: here's this frumpy old woman who's never been kissed, and she's famous!! Isn't this amazing?!!
While it may prove that there's hope for all of us (hope for what exactly, I don't know) I think this story also shows how superficial we all are. When I watched the video, as Ms. Boyle introduced herself, I saw a loser. From that perception I then assumed that she wouldn't be very talented. How wrong my assumptions were and how sad that I had those assumptions. There are plenty of examples of talent not being associated with beauty...think of all the dappy starlets in Hollywood, or the wimpy computer geeks that develop technologies that revolutionize our world.
Yet in the face of all this evidence, the public's reaction to Ms. Boyle's performance shows that we still think we can spot talent in someone's appearance. Have we really been so brainwashed by entertainment that we believe all geniuses look like Russell Crowe (when he was young, not the flabby, middle-aged porker he's become!!) and all spies look like Julia Roberts?! This is a sad day for humanity!
That hip swing and grind at the beginning was perhaps intended to be off-puttingly naive but was, perhaps, calculated to mislead. Similarly, perhaps she is too unsophisticated to dress her person better but it seemed to me she'd made herself look as bad as possible, again to mislead. I could easily be wrong!
Posted by: susie | April 14, 2009 at 05:29 PM