The Susan Boyle phenomenon
April 17, 2009
by Violet Socks, Editor
A few hours after Susan Boyle stunned audiences on Britain’s Got Talent, a commenter at my blog posted the link. “Have you seen this?” she asked. Six days later, everyone has seen it. Everyone with a TV or an internet connection, that is.
When I first watched the clip, I was disturbed by the audience’s initial eye-rolling and derisive laughter. This, I thought, is why I have so little tolerance for pop culture. The twits were laughing at Susan Boyle for no other reason than that she was not young and not gorgeous. Apparently it was heinously absurd for a not-young, not-gorgeous woman to even haul herself out there on a stage (boo! hiss! climb back in the Kitty Condo with your cats why don’t you!) much less have the sheer monstrous hubris of thinking she could sing.
But of course she can sing, beautifully, and everyone in the world is now thrilled by this reminder that even not-young, not-gorgeous women still have value. If they can sing.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Susan Boyle. I love her story, I love the phenomenon, I love the comments around the world from people tearfully rejoicing in the triumph of a “normal” person. I hope she sells a million CDs. I guess I’m just wondering what it all means. As Tamar Abrams observes in the HuffPost, “the problem is that recognition of her talent is directly proportionate to her lack of good looks and youth… what does it say about the civilized world that our expectations for greatness are diminished when people are unattractive and/or old?”
Well, I’m going to take a wild swing here and say that it means our civilization is shallow and superficial and crap. It’s also sexist. Abrams asks, “when did looks and age become the bar by which we are each judged?” which of course is a rhetorical question, unless Abrams has just arrived here as an exchange student from the Andromeda Galaxy. Looks and age have always been the bar by which women are judged, at least in male-dominated societies. The only thing that’s changed in my lifetime is that the bar has gotten higher. The pornification of our culture means that we are surrounded by a nonstop effluvium of plasticized fembot imagery, beside which any normal human being looks like Gollum. No wonder real live women are having their parts changed out for artificial bits; they’re just trying to look more like what’s on the Spice Channel.
The double standard is especially obvious in the performing arts. Of course beauty is a big plus for anybody, male or female, but the fact is that men with talent and ability have never been held back by ugliness, chubbiness, hairlessness, or any other -ess I can think of. Pop music, for example, is full of deeply ugly men — and I mean scary ugly — as well as average blokes with paunches and receding hairlines (hello, Elton John and Phil Collins). And can anyone imagine a woman of Meatloaf’s heft having the kind of career he had? My youth was haunted by videos of Meatloaf sweating and howling through 8-minute songs in heavy rotation on MTV, but when Ann Wilson put on a few pounds she was practically banned from the channel. America had to be protected from the horror.
I don’t see things changing anytime soon, but at least the wonderful Susan Boyle has given us a brief bit of breathing space. Enjoy it while it lasts.
EXERCISES
1. Watch the video (in case you haven't watched it yet!)
2. Read the article and try to guess the meaning of the words in bold.
3. Check with a dictionary. Post the meaning of the words in the Comments section.
4. Summarize the article using the Comments section.
Original article taken from www.thenewagenda.net
