Apr 29 2009
Quoting Poetically: An Asia Perspective on Susan Boyle
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“Singer Susan Boyle, our latest instant celebrity, reminds me of any number of singers I conducted in amateur renditions of the easier Schubert or Haydn masses, or the sort of matron who sings “Katti-Shaw” or “Buttercup” in the local Gilbert and Sullivan production. Musical talent springs up like grass, and engaging voices are a dollar a dozen. That Boyle has come to embody the triumph of ordinary people over obscurity, complete with invitations to appear on Oprah and Larry King, is disheartening. The popular audience in the West likes to validate its own mediocrity, and crowns stars-for-a-day.” “Spengler” for the Asia Times April 21, 2009
Is Spengler right? Does the U.S. praise mediocrity. Do the parading America Idol “losers” really think that anybody can be a star? After years of being all about looks, Hollywood embraces a person like karaoke lover William Hung got a record deal from his being tone deaf. Paris Hilton became famous from inheriting millions of dollars. Yes today, reality TV relishes the opposite extreme with shows like VH1 Flavor of Love starring a naturally and almost nutritiously inebriated guy who thinks wearing a top hat and a cartoonishly ponderous clock (which truthfully does not tell time at all) to church is somehow not ostentatious and hemakes a go at “love” with the most uncouth, socially inept, vapid and vacant woman to walk the earth whose most remembered words will likely be, “Bitch, I’ll kill you!” And what is to be said of the relentlessly showcased cavalcade-like fleet of willing participants in eating raw goat testicles on NBC’s Fear Factor? This apparently is part of the latest amendment to the ever-wanted and seemingly now ever-closer American Dream. Do nothing great. Look interesting doing it. Get famous. But after all this, Susan Boyle possesses something else, something which is rarely given a spotlight - talent… despite one’s not looking the part.
Wax the truth.
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I think that in the case of some of the so-called celebrities (US and elsewhere), mediocrity would be a reach!
Go Susan!