Is Susan Boyle's Dream Becoming a Nightmare?
The Media Turns on Britain's Got Talent Star
Jun 1, 2009
Despite her world-wide popularity, Susan Boyle came second behind dance troupe Diversity in this years Britain's Got Talent competition. After the surprise result that shocked the bookies, the judges and the public, Boyle was assessed under the Mental Health Act and taken by ambulance to the Priory Clinic in London. This latest episode, in what is quickly becoming a modern day tragedy, follows earlier media reports of Boyle acting erratically at the Wembley Plaza Hotel and backstage at the final.
Stories of her screaming at strangers and yelling obscenities at the hotel TV signalled the start of the media's turn against the singer which may have cost her the competition. However, the suggestion that Boyle is unstable is the final insult to a woman who simply wanted to sing in front of a live audience, but who unwittingly became fodder for a media machine determined to fuel, exploit, and ultimately destroy, success.
Britain's Got Talent's Exploitation of Susan Boyle
The exploitation of Boyle by the media began before she ever stepped onto the stage. As a television brand, Britain's Got Talent relies on manipulating emotions and manufacturing rags to riches narratives. Boyle's talent may have been a surprise to the audience, but it was already known to the producers who sift through the long list of contestants for an act that will hit the right market share buttons: underemployed and/or unattractive with a tragic or pathetic life story. The 2007 winner of BGT, Paul Potts, was proof of the winning formula: a quiet, unassuming man, not much to look at, but with a talent that surprised the audience and transformed him from a minimum wage salesman to world famous opera singer.
Last year's winner, the teenaged street dancer, George Sampson, had his own story of a fatherless childhood and health problems but it ultimately did not generate the media and Internet buzz that Pott's narrative did. Ask anyone who George Sampson is and you will likely be met with a furrowed brow.
This year's competition needed to up the stakes; enter Susan Boyle. Arguably, her stardom is the result of the initial prejudice against her. Shamed by the judges for snickering at her appearance, the audience rewarded Boyle with accolades not only for her singing, but also to appease their guilt over their collective class snobbery. In the calculated staging of the Dickensian narrative, it was a monumental success. Who would have predicted that Boyle would become the favourite of stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, and Demi Moore, catapulting her beyond the tabloid driven British media into the high octane world of American celebrity?
The Media Bias and Unrelenting Surveillance of Susan Boyle
While this may have guaranteed success for all involved, it also meant Boyle had to endure a level of scrutiny that even seasoned celebrities find distressing. The formidable invasion of her personal space, and the full-scale penetration of every aspect of her life, while initially flattering, quickly turned into the stuff of nightmares. There is little indication that she received much support from the television executives who, while rubbing their hands together in glee, failed to comprehend the effect this complete erosion of privacy would have on the unsophisticated Boyle; nor did they prepare her for the inevitable backlash that British tabloids exact when one of their citizens rises above her station.
There are also gender implications in the Susan Boyle story. Paul Potts never had to contend with the same intrusion or obsessive commentary about his background and appearance; but as a female contestant, Boyle was expected to clean up, apply make-up, trim her eyebrows, and buy a new wardrobe. The media has obsessed about her age, her unmarried (and presumably virgin) status, and her, as yet undefined, learning disability. Now, as the tragedy unfolds, the media is poised to diagnose her every outburst. Not content to label her an ugly spinster, she will undoubtably be deemed mad as well.
Susan Boyle still has millions of fans and whatever her fate, be it a singing career or quiet return to obscurity, she should be celebrated for her courage and tenacity in the face of class prejudice and gender bias, and for her strength in the face of a ruthless tabloid media.
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