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We Identify With Singer, Judges, Audience
By Frank Diamond, For The Bulletin
Last week, I set aside Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and descended from my highbrow perch to trifle with the latest goings on in the zeitgeist of the hoi polloi. Hah! Got you, didn’t I?
Actually, I looked up the night the Phillies were rained out to see Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.
Those of you caught in a time warp in which Marty McFly invents rock ‘n’ roll or Captain Kirk repopulates the Earth’s whale population might not know of what I speak. The rest of you have seen at least a snippet of Ms. Boyle knocking them dead on the British TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” It was difficult to miss.
Television news shows throughout the week played up the story almost as much as they did the rescue of Richard Phillips, the captain of the hijacked freighter ship, the Maersk Alabama, from the hands of Somali pirates, or North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile.
The positive vibes directed Ms. Boyle’s way aren’t likely to fade anytime soon. Within one week, the video of the Scottish singer’s performance set a record for most Web views at more than 66 million.
Ms. Boyle, 48, is genuine. She doesn’t look a star. She’s dowdy and, as she told the cameras, has never been kissed. (Though, that too, might soon change.)
With her old-fashioned dress and bird’s nest hairdo, she’s eccentric enough to garner a few sideway glances on a crowded train platform. Set her beside young, sleek pretties in a talent competition and she resembles Harpo Marx’s guest appearance on “I Love Lucy.”
When she walked out on stage last week the audience geared up to laugh her right back to the village from whence she came.
Then, she sang.
From the first note we knew we were witnessing beauty. The awed quiet that welcomed the initial line of the song got swamped by waves of applause that chaperoned the tune toward its crescendo. Ms. Boyle proved that humility and self-confidence can coexist when she began walking off stage and had to be told to go back and face her accolades.
We don’t just care because everybody identifies with the underdog. Yes, most of us at some point in our lives see ourselves as Ms. Boyle. We’re all underrated talent just looking for the opportunity to show “them.” When she said backstage before her appearance that, “I’m going to make that audience rock,” she spoke for anybody who’s ever been kept in check because, for one reason or another, the abilities we possess had never been displayed.
We identify with Ms. Boyle. However, to borrow a line from one of the show’s judges, the ubiquitous Simon Cowell, if we’re being honest, we identify with everybody else in the clip as well.
We identify with the judges because we’ve all made snap assessments based on a person’s looks. We’ve all rolled our eyes or grimaced at the eccentrics among us. Even in our area of expertise, whether it’s neuroscience or waste management, we’ve all gotten it wrong at least once.
We identify with the audience because we, too, can be easily swayed. We, too, can find ourselves among the mob and thinking like the mob. We too can let the so-called elites among us do the heavy thinking for us, rather then collecting the information and coming to a decision on our own.
We can even identify with the two goofy emcees backstage, though we can’t understand a Cockney word they’re saying. We’ve all too often been content to step back and offer snarky and snide comments on those with the courage to jump into the arena. We’ve all tried too hard to make people like us. We’ve all spoken with a Brit accent — wait, OK, maybe not that one.
Every decade finds a new reworking of the maxim that it’s what’s inside that counts. What’s inside Ms. Boyle is a pristine instrument. In the clip, the camera picks up this exchange between two of the judges: “What a voice!” “Incredible!”
History and fiction bulges with the stories of winners too often mistaken for losers. We forget this enough that every reminder can be cause for the sort of cultural watershed that Ms. Boyle’s triumph generates. Shouldn’t we know better by now?
Frank Diamond can be reached at fpdiamond@yahoo.com
Actually, I looked up the night the Phillies were rained out to see Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.
Those of you caught in a time warp in which Marty McFly invents rock ‘n’ roll or Captain Kirk repopulates the Earth’s whale population might not know of what I speak. The rest of you have seen at least a snippet of Ms. Boyle knocking them dead on the British TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” It was difficult to miss.
Television news shows throughout the week played up the story almost as much as they did the rescue of Richard Phillips, the captain of the hijacked freighter ship, the Maersk Alabama, from the hands of Somali pirates, or North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile.
The positive vibes directed Ms. Boyle’s way aren’t likely to fade anytime soon. Within one week, the video of the Scottish singer’s performance set a record for most Web views at more than 66 million.
Ms. Boyle, 48, is genuine. She doesn’t look a star. She’s dowdy and, as she told the cameras, has never been kissed. (Though, that too, might soon change.)
With her old-fashioned dress and bird’s nest hairdo, she’s eccentric enough to garner a few sideway glances on a crowded train platform. Set her beside young, sleek pretties in a talent competition and she resembles Harpo Marx’s guest appearance on “I Love Lucy.”
When she walked out on stage last week the audience geared up to laugh her right back to the village from whence she came.
Then, she sang.
From the first note we knew we were witnessing beauty. The awed quiet that welcomed the initial line of the song got swamped by waves of applause that chaperoned the tune toward its crescendo. Ms. Boyle proved that humility and self-confidence can coexist when she began walking off stage and had to be told to go back and face her accolades.
We don’t just care because everybody identifies with the underdog. Yes, most of us at some point in our lives see ourselves as Ms. Boyle. We’re all underrated talent just looking for the opportunity to show “them.” When she said backstage before her appearance that, “I’m going to make that audience rock,” she spoke for anybody who’s ever been kept in check because, for one reason or another, the abilities we possess had never been displayed.
We identify with Ms. Boyle. However, to borrow a line from one of the show’s judges, the ubiquitous Simon Cowell, if we’re being honest, we identify with everybody else in the clip as well.
We identify with the judges because we’ve all made snap assessments based on a person’s looks. We’ve all rolled our eyes or grimaced at the eccentrics among us. Even in our area of expertise, whether it’s neuroscience or waste management, we’ve all gotten it wrong at least once.
We identify with the audience because we, too, can be easily swayed. We, too, can find ourselves among the mob and thinking like the mob. We too can let the so-called elites among us do the heavy thinking for us, rather then collecting the information and coming to a decision on our own.
We can even identify with the two goofy emcees backstage, though we can’t understand a Cockney word they’re saying. We’ve all too often been content to step back and offer snarky and snide comments on those with the courage to jump into the arena. We’ve all tried too hard to make people like us. We’ve all spoken with a Brit accent — wait, OK, maybe not that one.
Every decade finds a new reworking of the maxim that it’s what’s inside that counts. What’s inside Ms. Boyle is a pristine instrument. In the clip, the camera picks up this exchange between two of the judges: “What a voice!” “Incredible!”
History and fiction bulges with the stories of winners too often mistaken for losers. We forget this enough that every reminder can be cause for the sort of cultural watershed that Ms. Boyle’s triumph generates. Shouldn’t we know better by now?
Frank Diamond can be reached at fpdiamond@yahoo.com
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