Malfunctioning Boyler

Sboyler alert: the result of Britain's Got Talent will be revealed in the course of this post. That is, now: Susan Boyle lost. Claimer: my anti-populist prejudices will be revealed in the course of this post. No time like the present. Susan Boyle's rise to global phenomenon gives me a sensation too strong for a shitty euphemism. It gives me fully-fledged splats of diarrhoea.

For those of you who aren't exiled in the Mother Country and haven't been touched by the swine-fluesque pandemic of 'I dreamed a dream' on Youtube, Susan Boyle is (now was) a contestant on the much-adored TV show Britain's Got Talent (like the various worldwide incarnations of Idol, but with less restrictive prescriptions for the type of performance). A frumpish 48-yr-old Scottish woman who openly confessed to having 'never been kissed', she was catapulted to mega-stardom upon her 'inspiring' performance of 'I Dreamed a Dream'; as the powerful voice emerged from the puffy face, it shattered preconceptions of what a frumpish 48-yr-old Scottish woman is capable of achieving. This is all so bile-boyling that I feel as if it should go into the safe, scorn-surrounded quarantine of quotation marks. Something about the whole affair pissed me off profoundly; quotes will only isolate the malaise, not explain it.

I don't take issue with Boyle's success per se. She obviously has a great voice, and all good luck to her in future endeavours that make use of this 'talent' she has generously showed us she's 'got'. Nor do I object to a performer's appeal being consciously stroked and enhanced by their biography: to put art in context and pinpoint where it comes from is to satisfy our nosiness and flatter our comprehension abilities. In many cases, an artist's captivating back-story eclipses interest in their actual output, or hauls them from mortal to myth. Boyle's story isn't so much a transcendence of adversity as it is of mediocrity; a trajectory which seems to sell much better in the current zest for 'reality'. Even so, if she doesn't exaggerate when she proclaims her lifelong lack of intimacy, I wonder if she wouldn't exchange her fleeting pop-deification for the enduring memory of a first kiss with Ted McCormick, sitting by the edge of the Loch, a tender young lass of wee more than fifteen. Her initial pin-up image of benign, smily old spinster has also been qualified after a few reported outbursts. Something tells me that Boyle would be a formidable presence to stumble upon in her local pub habitat.

Some would say that all of this is superficial shadow narrative: what we should really listen to is Boyle's stellar voice. That's all good and idealistic. But you can't stop an information-greedy populace licking up every last crumb it's fed. I used to argue passionately for a separation between the juries of artist and man when it came to the genius of Shane Warne. Whatever his shortcomings as hubby, he was a marvellous leg spinner. That line was also easy to toe because I find all expressions of public indignation at private (and minor) misdemeanours inherently funny. Still, I liked to think it was just plain fairness and tolerance. My protestations did nothing to redeem Warney at the nadir of his reputation however; my former boss would splutter coffee over the Sunday rags in pronouncing the verdict 'I hate that man.' Likewise in the Boyle case, people surely voted for a story as much as they did a performer/performance. Clever song choice ('I dreamed a dream' - did you then?) neatly tied the two together, such that one became a reminder of the other. The dream is one of the oldest feel-good metaphors in the book. Obama cashed in on the pos. cons too, slipping the word into the title of his autobiography, and thus the wider grammar of his election rhetoric: 'hope' and 'change' etc. I find it difficult to connect with this language, partly because I'm a cynical bastard, partly because most of my dreams feature failure, futile repetition, random numbers, badgers with dentures, Juvenal's third satire, and death. Some of which morph organically into others.

But the dripping sentiment is too easy a target, and predictability is also a recurring bad dream. What really galled me about the whole affair was that the judges, and presumably the public whose collective reaction they were trying to mirror, were unexpectedly blown away by a frumpish 48-yr-old with a good voice (it also galls me that I feel like I have to put in 'frumpish 48-yr-old' to illustrate). It was all so condescending: the frequent cuts to the judges' open mouths, the screaming fans, the proliferation of uses of the adjective 'incredible'. What's so bloody incredible about a good voice? Aah, so it wasn't the voice. It was the shock of witnessing the voice emerge not from a botox-high, orthodontically arranged mouth, but the hair-crowned lips of your ageless aunt Gladys. The subtext was precisely that: how could a woman who looks like that, sound like that? Which brings me to perhaps my most controversial slam: that wasn't that good anyway. It might be my ignorance of most things musical, but I for one felt nothing upon seeing that youtube vid; only a vague sense of resentment at being roped into the circus. If we shifted media, to, say, the good old wireless, would the Boyle reach the same dizzying heights, and cause everyone to swoon with ballooning belief in their own sky's-the-limitless potential? If a tear did appear in the corner of my eye as her hips began to 'rediscover' some dormant sensuality, planted in the first place by hours of staring at gyratin' bodies on the telly, it was shed for lost dignity, not long-denied success.

There's some consolation in the equally swift deceleration into obscurity that waits for Boyle with warm, open arms. The advantage of 'reality' fame in the youtube generation is its comical transience, an unreality that will look completely implausible when you're back on the outside, keeping pace with the ladies and gents who love a bit of implausibility, especially when it's not that implausible. The badgers may come once; but it's not likely they will come again.