Susan Boyle Teaches Us A Lesson

Saturday, April 18, 2009

 You go, girl.

I am no fan of "reality" television. Especially the talent competitions. These shows make millions of dollars by making fools out of everyday people, and specialize in selecting the most "marketable" singin' bimbo or himbo. American Idol specializes in making people out to be fools. They go out of their way to do that, by showing "audition episodes" to start out each season. In these episodes, the public is treated to wave after wave of people who are perfectly willing to be humiliated for the sake of ratings for Fox.

In Western culture, superficial things such as physical appearance are valued above all else. The entertainment industry is no exception, and is indeed one of the prime culprits in our transformation into a shallow culture. Plasticized bimbos with little vocal talent dominate the music charts. Most of the yodeling bimbos who are successful these days owe their success to careful attention to marketing and even more careful attention to electronic altering of the bimbo's voice so that it is passable on CD or onstage.

However, once in a while someone comes along who reminds us not to judge the proverbial book by its cover (I'm as guilty as anyone else, so don't think I'm preachin' to anyone here). In this case, the "someone" is Susan Boyle, a 47 year-old unmarried woman from Scotland. As many of you probably already know, she recently appeared on the British talent competition Britain's Got Talent. This show is another one of Simon Cowell's endeavors.

Those of you who count themselves among the over 25 million people who have seen the Youtube video of Susan's performance (in just one week!) will agree that she, while a lovely and sweet person, in no way fits the Western ideal of physical beauty. Her teeth are a mess, her hair is wild and unruly, she's overweight and all in all she could easily be the dictionary definition of the word "frumpy". She came off as a bit scatterbrained, and had trouble at one point putting her words together coherently. The show introduced her in the way these shows introduce all the abject failures presented for the audience's entertainment - with scenes of her wolfing down a sandwich, of her doing a goofy interview with that show's versions of Ryan Seacrest, all the while never taking her in the least seriously.

So, when she walked out on stage, the audience was already primed for amusement at her expense. The judges were no better, with smirks and eye-rolls galore. Simon, as he does on American Idol, asked her where she was from, how old she was (his eyes almost rolled out of his head when she said she was 47), and the real laugh came when he asked her who she wanted to be as famous as. "Elaine Paige", Susan replied. That got the audience going, with shots of the audience showing smirks and laughter. Simon asked her what song she was going to sing, and she replied "I Dreamed the Dream" from Les Miserables. So the music was cued, and she began to sing.

Oh, my.

She had barely finished the first ten words to the song and the audience went wild in shock, approval and utter disbelief. The standing ovation she received lasted through almost the entirety of her performance, with two of the three judges joining in at times (Simon did not stand up, although he did sit there with an amazed grin on his face much of the time).

After Boyle's transcendent performance, she walked off the stage, forgetting that she still had to speak to the judges. A delightfully humorous moment, actually - one that bespoke of her childlike naivete. When the judges did speak to her, two of them were pretty cruel while they were lavishing praise on her. Piers Morgan said  "When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said, 'I want to be like Elaine Paige', everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now." Amanda Holden told her "I am so thrilled, because I know that everybody was against you." Talk about backhanded compliments. The implication of course, is that since Ms. Boyle is not physically a supermodel, that no one had any expectations of her doing a worthwhile singing job. Somehow, we have gotten it into our heads that being beautiful somehow lends to one's singing voice. We have put ourselves in a wretched place where we tell ourselves that physically unattractive people are beneath our serious consideration because they can't possibly be good at anything.

As I stated in the beginning of this post, I dislike reality TV. However, I got wind of this performance on a discussion forum, and mainly out of boredom I clicked on the Youtube link with absolutely zero expectations. I'm very cynical and not given to undue displays of emotion, but after seeing the whole sequence my eyes were welling up with tears. I rarely have seen a moment like this in all my life. I can only think of a couple of comparable triumphs of the human spirit that have gained notoriety in the last few years. One was when a high school basketball team let their severely autistic team member come off the bench and actually play - to which he responded by nailing a multitude of three-pointers that played a huge role in his team's victory. The other was a youth baseball team that, with the game on the line, put in a teammate severely disabled with Down syndrome. The opposing team voluntarily let them win by allowing the disabled child to get a hit - as I recall they basically let him have an inside the park home run.

So, I have to wonder... if moments like these are so special, why aren't we as a society doing more to encourage them? I am confident that while Susan Boyle's performance temporarily touched millions of people's hearts, in short order most of us will probably return to laughing at those who aren't considered pinnacles of beauty. We will continue to laugh at them and not expect anything from them, in order to allow us to overlook our own myriad imperfections and feel better about ourselves in the process.

We should be exalting the Susan Boyles of this world, not denigrating them. The fact that we don't says a hell of a lot more about us than it does Susan Boyle.

In reality, in all the ways that matter, Susan Boyle is extraordinarily beautiful. Not in the shallow physical sense, but in the human sense. An unassuming, friendly, loving person who stays at home to take care of her elderly, ailing mother. A person full of love who freely, if sadly, admits she's "never been kissed". A person who delighted in telling the world she has a cat named Pebbles. A person who, from what I can see, takes the taunts of a mean-spirited world in stride, and instead of going tit-for-tat, gives nothing back but sweetness and modesty (and a marvelous voice) in return.

In a world where "success" is personified by talentless human wreckage like Britney Spears, Susan Boyle is a reminder of what real success is all about. Success and beauty do not come from external sources, they come from the strength within us. Ms. Boyle taught the world an important lesson last week, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude for causing us to at least temporarily look in the mirror she presented us with.

For those of you who have not seen this remarkable video, go here (Youtube is not allowing embedding of this video for some reason). I also found a recording of her singing "Cry Me A River" from a 1999 charity CD, which you can listen to here.

Will she achieve her dream of being a renowned professional singer in the long run? I would imagine she has a very good shot, especially with Simon Cowell now firmly in her corner, reportedly putting together a recording deal for her. I have seen some critiques of her performance on the Internet that put aside the human drama aspect and call her singing mediocre by professional standards. That may be true; I'm certainly no expert on the subject. However, if that stunning performance is indicative of an untrained singing voice, I would imagine professional vocal training would greatly enhance the huge vocal advantage she already has over the vast majority of the world.

Internet cynics have been out in force, claiming that this entire drama has been a contrivance by the show's producers to make millions of dollars off of suckers like us, while Susan herself gets used up and cast out after she is no longer of any use. Well, there is probably some nugget of truth in what they say. After all, the producers did know her singing voice before she went out on stage that night, so they purposely cast her as the ultimate underdog in order to elicit the desired response. Shows like that exist to make money for their networks, and no one should be so naive as to think that show business is not a calculating enterprise that is based on the bottom line like any other business. However, I believe that in this case, the cynics are being petty, narrow-minded, and are missing the greater point.

Whatever Ms. Boyle's singing future has in store for her, she has, in the space of a few short minutes, already had a more profound impact on the world than many musical performers could ever hope to achieve simply by singing one song. God bless you, Susan Boyle. You uplifted us, and you gave us all a lot to reflect on by showing us what real beauty is all about.