A Paradigm Shift in Pop Culture?
Why is this Susan Boyle person all over my internet?
When I say ‘my internet’, what I mean is that I am in the United States. Not Great Britain. The show on which she is a contestant is called “Britain’s Got Talent”. We already have “America’s Got Talent”, and it’s a pretty good show. Do they have the finalists from AGT On British television and all over England’s internet? Somehow I doubt it.
And it isn’t just the internet. I saw a spot about her on a promo for Access Hollywood or something like that. Enough is enough. She’s just a contestant on a TV show in a country on another continent. Why is she getting all of this coverage around here?
Actually, I know why, and that is the reason for this rant. The answer as to why she’s all over the place is actually quite astounding. It isn’t because she’s talented. She is – but there are talented people everywhere – and most of them don’t find their way into my RSS reader. The reason she is getting all of this attention is because she possesses a very unique trait that sets her apart: she is epically unattractive.
Source: newsimg.bbc.co.uk
That’s right. She has become a worldwide phenomenon solely due to the fact that she is ugly. That she can sing well is only mildly noteworthy. Without the harmonious vocals that she is able to produce, she’s just another uggo, and we would disregard her as we do with most all women of such dubious distinction. Alternatively, if she were more attractive, she’d just be another pop star in the making and I would have never heard about her.
There’s an underlying implication that all of this suggests: that we’ve grown bored with pretty people.
Think about that for a minute. Susan Boyle has won the hearts of millions of people because she has nothing – she’s ‘never been kissed’ – or so they’ve sold her. We feel sorry for her and we want her to win. We want to root for the ugly chick because if she loses she’ll have nothing – whereas if the pretty girl loses the competition – well, at least she’ll still have her looks. This is rooting for the underdog to the extreme – when in reality this person is probably not the underdog at all as far as the competition is concerned.
I can already see Simon Cowell’s new prime time TV show on FOX: Ugly People’ve Got Talent. During the opening auditions, instead of having to win over two out of the three judges to advance to Hollywood or Vegas or where ever, in order to be accepted they have to drive the majority of the panel to put a brown paper bag over their head (ala Detroit Lions Fans) before the end of their performance. And instead of looking for ‘talent’ in glamorous places like New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, etc, they will travel to places like Gary, IN, Toledo, OH and other toxic waste American cities in order to find qualifying contestants.
The point of all of this is that if you look at pop culture as a whole – from a visual standpoint – there are very few downright unattractive people. And none without talent. Conversely, there are many attractive people – men and women – with borderline or lower levels of talent. There are numerous examples of this, Colin Farrell, Keanu Reeves, Britney Spears, the governor of Alaska, just to name a few. Yet they survive and even thrive in show business almost exclusively on how they look.
Has society crossed a threshold that now the Paris Hiltons of the world are going to be squeezed out in favor of those who actually have something to offer besides an annually ‘leaked’ sex video?
Somehow I doubt that, but it’s fun to imagine such a society, isn’t it?
