Beauty and the Bandwagon

You've probably heard about Susan Boyle. She's not much of a looker. Thus, people were surprised by just how nice her voice sounded when she she sang on a British reality show. It's kind of a neat story, but it's pretty darn basic. So if that's how I feel, than why am I writing about this?

Most of my posts on here are the direct result of some thick rush of inspiration and emotion; I feel so strongly about something that I need to channel it into a coherent argument and share it, and so it is with this one. It's not Boyle's performance itself though that has me so agitated, it's the global response that spawned from it.

The first time I heard of Boyle was, in true viral age fashion, on facebook. Someone had posted the link to her performance and commented that they started out with chills and ended with tears. This piqued my interest a bit, but being skeptical of the commenter's tastes, I didn't bother watching. About an hour later the headline on Yahoo! featured the same video, at which point I realized this was probably a pretty big deal, and yet, from the subtitle, something along the lines of "Middle-aged Brit who has 'Never been kissed' Wows Audience," I remained the cynic, as it sounded like a pretty standard cliche about appearances. A few days later I was talking to my mom on the phone and she asked me if I had seen that British woman sing the song from Les Miserables. I responded in the negative, but learning that her selection was from Les Mis pushed my curiosity over the edge and I looked it up. As stated, my reaction was pretty mild. She was decent, it was surprising, game over. (And by the way, who else feels like sucker punching the host with his goofy grin when he says "Didn't expect that did you? no! Ya didn't!"?)

Now, if you know me, you more than likely know I'm a huge fan of the aforementioned musical adaptation of Hugo's novel. It rocks. So, naturally, after hearing Boyle's rendition, I was in the mood to look up a video from the version of it I was raised on (if starting in ninth grade counts as "raised"): the 10th anniversary concert special. Now that version is the one that has brought tears to my eyes before. Once again I was overwhelmed by its impeccable, flawless execution. What was less overwhelming were all the comments that had sprouted up on the video. Page after page of them, hundreds, if not thousands, of comments bearing the same message "Susan brought me here." The video, which I've watched and enjoyed reading the praise of many times before, had been outright spammed by Boyle's followers.

The lackeys of her and her merely pleasant performance had co-opted one of my favorite songs, "I Dreamed a Dream" as performed by Ruthie Henshall (note: the original link posted here went dead, so some of the following remarks are accordingly outdated), and not only that it turns out, but nearly every Les Mis song linked in the "related videos" section had been spammed. I began wafting through the comments, searching for some sign of intelligent life among the hullabaloo, only to regret my wish when the only comments I could find with any content declared "This one's nice, but Susan's is better" or "Pretty good, but I prefer Susan." That was the final straw, I had to find someone whom I could relate to. I poured over maybe a dozen pages before I finally found one kindred spirit who exclaimed, "Susan did NOT bring me here, now eff off!" and one more stating "The only reason there's a big hype surrounding her is because people didn't think that somebody who looked like her{no offense Susan}could sing the way she did. ... Ruthie performs this with great execution, understanding of character and overwhelming emotion that, were you in the audience, or indeed looking at it on something like youtube, it reaches inside of you." I couldn't have said it better myself. I wanted to scream "Are you even listening to these two? Ruthie isn't even in the same league."

Are people so blinded by such a simple ugly duckling story that their hearing is actually impaired? And seriously, vocal quality aside, I even have a hard time accepting that people are so moved by Boyle's performance. Is society really that shallow?--She doesn't look appealing but her voice sounds attractive--Sensory Overload!-Does not compute! Honestly, is Boyle anything more than the next step up from William Hung? And to those who laughed at her, have you seriously progressed so little? Have you never seen a homely talented person? She's a pretty cool woman, she defied people who laughed at her, and inspired people by doing this (and seriously, the level of antagonism she faced still baffles me, I had no problem believing from the start that jovial woman might be able to legitimately sing - not that I expected it), but does that mean they have to uncompromisingly stick by her and her voice? It shouldn't. The fact that she got a standing ovation is almost offensive because the only reason it happened was to compensate for the initial criticism she was dealt. Obviously I'm a bit biased myself but it's almost infuriating to hear Susan called superior to Henshall. People can't be swept away by every inspirational figure who comes along. The pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction as to become uncredible, with people doling out outlandish praise, throwing around words like "angelic" when that simply isn't the case. It has almost become a backlash against people who aren't unattractive because they didn't face adversity, but if Susan taught them anything it should be to assess on merit alone, not on appearances, whichever way they lean. Seacrest out.