I dreamed a dream...

I would like to wish Susan Boyle good luck with the TV popularity contest next week.

She has endured her fifteen minutes of fame through a rollercoaster ride of derision and condecension, but she has at least displayed a modicum of the the elusive titular talent that the good Mr. Cowell and his irrelevant stage-dressing companions have futilely tried to assure us that “Britain’s got”.

In case you’ve missed the story arc, I’ll summarise it as succinctly as I can: a fairly unremarkable older woman, who has a fairly unremarkable life and a rather less than comely appearance has a reasonably nice voice. She performed on a TV ‘talent’ show and appeared to catch out the audience and judges by showing that a middle-aged homely fat bird can sing a bit. She then took the media world by storm...

I have been vaguely fascinated by the way various ‘entertainment’ media have propagandised this non-story. I’ll grant you that the woman has a reasonably nice voice, but let’s put this into a bit of perspective here, we’re not talking Kiri Te Kanawa or Montserrat Caballé (or even Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston or a any host of others depending on your musical preferences).

The story that the media are trying to sell us has got little to do with a human interest story, even less to do with newly discovered talent from deepest darkest West Lothian, and, unfortunately, absolutely fuck all to do with Susan Boyle.

The real story is another typical media hypocricy.

Despite the fact that the pretty people are everywhere - on film, TV and magazines, despite the fact that we have makeover shows on 24-hours a day on 500 different channels, despite the fact we are bombarded with features on how to get the perfect body/face/complection in just “5 easy steps” and we are all going to die because of our lifestyle (eating too much, not eating the right things, drinking too much, not doing enough exercise and so on) – you, yes YOU, you can still be a star! Even with the frizzy hair, pockmarked pizza face and the spare tractor tyre around your waist, if you really want it and you live your dream, YOU can still be the Next Big Thing.

Susan Boyle is no longer a real person. She’s an allegory for all of us living normal, unremarkable, unrecognised existences. All she’s there for is to fuel the media beast, to ensure that there is a continuing line of mediocre people ready willing and able to prostrate themselves in front of the great god public scrutiny for our cheap viewing pleasure and for something vacuous to digest along with the makeover shows and “Top 10 skinny celebrities”.

I really do wish her well with the contest and I hope she milks it for every single penny she can get. In real life, she’s most likely not going to be the Next Big Thing, just the last one...