You should be ashamed… but are you really?
My apologies as ever for the sporadic nature of my submissions. Unfortunately work and the real world have got in the way of spouting bile and bilge on here. On top of that, someone seems to have cruelly swapped my spine with one from a 130 year old corpse, which means that on occasion I can’t walk without feeling like I’ve been shot in the kidneys by a Sherman Tank.
My suffering is inconsequential however, when compared to the guilt ridden anxiety that every single British citizen has had to endure for the last 7 days because of Simon Cowell and Britain’s Got Talent.
I’m certain that anyone who is reading this will probably have had Susan Bolye forced down their throats all week. To summarise, the standard sideshow of desperate nobodies wanting their shot at stardom has shown that we are all shallow bastards, and should all feel very very bad about ourselves. The reason for this is that Miss Boyle (Scottish, 47, frumpy, never been kissed) has astonishingly demonstrated that the talent-fairies do not just shoot their magical arrows into stunners. Latest reports are that Youtube has had 25,000,000 hits to watch this woman’s performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables (so they don’t need me to put a link here, do they?)
There are good reasons to watch this clip- anyone who can wipe the smug snears off Cowell and Piers (I’m so smarmy I leave a snail-trail) Morgan’s collective faces, as well as put any expression on Amanda Holden’s surgically-sculpted visage, deserves to make an absolute fortune. I also like the fact that whichever gobshite gave a slow, mocking wolf-whistle when she came on stage must feel like a leper right about now.
The downside is the media’s response since this. I have heard at least 3 seperate radio phone-ins about just how evil and wrong we all are for even noticing the fact she had a face like a melted waxwork. God only knows how many newspapers have run similar, inciteful stories saying that we, the viewing public were the ugly ones, not Miss Boyle. How good of the media to criticise us for looking for the standards they have drilled into our heads.
Even more irritating is that there’s evidence that the American’s have now evolved to the point of understanding irony. Demi Moore (who works in the shallowest industry on the planet) has spoken of how the footage “brought her to tears.” Now THAT would have been a truly entertaining sight… tears emerging presumably from poor emotional Demi’s ears, given the number of facelifts she’s had to keep her career from circling the drain!
What worries me is that when the inevitable album, and subsequent media circus comes around, this poor woman is going to be pressured into becoming something that she’s not. To make myself clear, I have nothing against talant being rewarded with success. In a truly democratic world, it should only be the gifted who succeed. However, the cold hard truth is that there is going to be a constant pressure on Boyle to either be marketed as some kind of freak (come and see the gifted plain woman!) or to transform into something more “acceptable.”
Is it right that we mocked and expected humiliation when the tape began? No. I myself was being shown the Youtube clip by Techno Scouse, so was expecting a magpie/ninja/exploding midget related incident. I was disappointed.
There’s still no getting away from the fact that she’s now going to secure success on the basis of her looks. The marketing machine has already begun to warm up, and soon the subtle suggestion will be made that we should support this unattractive artist out of partial guilt. Is that worse than bands such as Girls Aloud succeeding because they are good looking (we’ll ignore Nicola for the sake of this argument… little alabaster-skinned troll that she is)? No…
… but it’s no better either.
