Now, if you've watched the video you can agree: this lady is talented. She gives a great performance (in a very pressure-filled situation, no less) and is rightly applauded. The thing that is absolutely infuriating to me about this is the reaction most people seem to have about this clip which is roughly: awww, bless her heart!
You're saying: 'gee, thats pretty uncharitable of you to be so upset at such a nice sentiment.' You say gee. Who still says that?
What makes me angry about the clip and the reaction to it are basically that the whole presentation of her performance is made with the barely-concealed subtext: this frumpy unibrow has absolutely no chance of being even remotely talented. This is done, of course, so that its a great big saccharine feel-good moment when she does in fact display her not inconsiderable talent.
This is one of the biggest and most devastating lies in entertainment. This is why we follow with baited breath the every move of completely talentless starlets who happen to have 1. a great rack, or whatever their claim to physical fame is 2. great producers. This is why people are up in arms about Britney Spears "If you seek Amy" when that joke is a hundred years old (Literally--read Ulysses), and is not even the first time that trope has appeared in music. The point is so completely and obviously true that it almost isn't worth making explicit, but at the same time, we so rarely seem to really understand that: physical appearance has almost nothing to do with talent, especially as a musician.
Oh yes, yes, you say: we know all that. So true! And yet the response to the clip on YouTube is permeated with the very same subtext: Frowsy Spinster Shockingly Not A Worthless Human Being! Just look at whoever the heck the blonde-haired judge is. She's literally gaping at the woman on stage. Now, part of that is certainly because she's Making Good TV, but again: she's most likely genuinely surprised that this person can sing, or do anything for that matter. And a lot of the responses to the video seem to run in the same: "Don't Judge a Book By its Cover" sort of surprise.
The point is that there's no visibly obvious reason that she shouldn't be talented. Talent makes no such demands. All it demands is persistent hard-work and, usually, some training from people ahead of you in your craft. Most of the beautiful people in music are not good musicians. This is not to say that you can't be both, but I defy anyone to make the argument for Britney Spears (the nuclear Ur-case in all of these arguments, I know) being a competent musician by ANY standards. Britney Spears does not exist without a modern recording studio. Just wouldn't happen. So all this hoopla over this woman appears to me to be blown out of proportion simply because she is the 'novel' case of a talented singer who isn't famous (read: beautiful). The world is full of them. I'm not saying that she shouldn't have gotten the applause. My argument is not that she's not talented and doesn't deserve the appreciation she got, my point is that she's not the exception, she's the rule.
If Hollywood or the music industry were truly a meritocracy, they'd both be a whole lot uglier on average, but we'd probably get better movies and a would definitely get a TON of amazing music from average looking people who have taken the time to develop a craft, and who are passionate about whatever it is that they do in music. (These people are still out there, but in a meritocratic recording-industry world, they'd have the backing of major labels--which by now is almost a moot point anyway. I digress.) This isn't a genre-bashing argument per-se, although the phenomenon of the pop-star has become so totally-image driven that its kind of hard to imagine music of that ilk being too popular if divorced from an attractive package in which to sell it. I'd take Ella Fitzgerald, bloated and diabetic, over Miley Cyrus every day of the week.
So for Susan Doyle, the less than runway-model looking vocalist: appreciate what she does (and does well), but don't be so dumbfounded that she can do it.
1 comment:
...Susan Boyle, not Doyle. My bad. Its late.
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