Miss Alli explains where the backlash goes from here.[T]here is something disturbing about the collective rejection-embrace-elevation of Susan Boyle. There is the element of self-congratulation in the viral spread of this link around the Web, the idea that we, the secondary viewers, the judges of those who are judging, are far more evolved. There is the clip itself, suspiciously ready-made for online consumption: A 7-minute movie, slick and pithy in its perfect execution of the underdog narrative. (That something like "Rocky" took two hours to tell now seems antediluvian.) There is the classic David vs. Goliath subplot, the primal satisfaction of seeing the bully (Cowell) slain by such a seemingly inferior force. And there is the profound desire for this entire thing to be authentic, which in and of itself suggests that it probably isn't. Not since P.T. Barnum has there been a show business master of the trompe l'oeil like Simon Cowell.
This isn't to suggest that Boyle herself is a hoax (though she does seem a bit too comfortable on that stage, parrying with Cowell, to be a complete naif). But the notion that Cowell was unaware of Boyle's existence, let alone discordant looks and talent level, before she ever took the stage, is flatly ridiculous. And the song Boyle chose - if she, in fact, chose it - so seamlessly provides the meta-narrative that it's easy to miss how calculated it is. From "Les Misérables" ("the miserable," the way we are meant to perceive Boyle), she sings "I Dreamed a Dream." Boyle opens on the second stanza: "I dreamed a dream in time gone by/When hope was high/And life worth living." In "Les Misérables," it's sung by a lonely, unemployed character on the fringes - just like Boyle, who sang with the undignified descriptor "unemployed, 47" slung across the bottom of the screen....
Most disturbing of all, perhaps, is that not since Saturday has Susan Boyle been Susan Boyle. It's a permutation of the Heisenberg principle: That 30 million people have heard her, seen her, embraced her has already changed who she is. The shy churchgoer who said that her recently deceased mother encouraged her to "take the risk," who admitted in her audition that she has never been kissed, who has forever lived as something of an accidental outcast - she now seems too much of this world. "I've been for a meeting with Sony BMG, but I can't say much about it," she said this week. "It's early days." Susan Boyle is now one of us. And that is really a shame.
e.t.a. The WaPo's Robin Givhan, on whether Boyle should have a makeover: "The politically correct answer: Only if she wants one. The honest answer: Yes.... The point of a proper makeover, however, is not to look like someone else but the best version of yourself. This is not a recommendation for an "Extreme Makeover," but rather the Tim Gunn or "What Not to Wear" version. ... The tale of Susan Boyle will not be complete until the shy spinster blossoms. Those who have been entranced by her story so far should let Boyle's fairy godmother finish her work."
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