Sunday, June 07, 2009
Keeping it unreal
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- Independent voice is silenced in merger
- TOP takes a hard knock
- Lagging on college access
- Alzheimer's drains minds and finances
From the RoundTable blog
Like Susan Boyle, I've dreamed a dream. Mine is that reality TV like the show that rocketed her to international fame in a matter of hours would die for lack of human fodder.
I know it won't because there is no lack of willing souls prepared to risk themselves for a shot at celebrity and the fortune and fulfillment that are supposed to come with it. And, of course, there is no lack of eager viewers demanding to be moved -- whether to cheer or to jeer hardly matters. It's all fun, and it's cheap to produce.
The cost can be high, though, for participants who aren't prepared for the loss of privacy that comes with turning one's self into a commodity for public consumption.
Not a new problem, I know, but a challenge for an unprecedented mass of humanity able to gain instant notoriety in this Internet-connected age.
Boyle, for the truly disconnected, is the middle-aged woman who walked onstage a frumpy, unpolished wannabe performer on the "Britain's Got Talent" TV show a few weeks ago and turned phenom the moment she started singing "I Dreamed a Dream" in a rich, clear voice.
She became an overnight global sensation, and that is not show biz hyperbole. Millions of people went to YouTube to watch the online video of her winning performance in the first round of the talent competition. That's where I saw her -- several times. It was thrilling to watch, not just her transformation, but the magic it worked on a hostile audience and panel of judges, including "American Idol's" brutal Simon Cowell.
Hundreds of millions of people have seen the video.
Yet, even in triumph Boyle seemed too vulnerable for this media blood sport.
She has talent, but few defenses against the intense scrutiny it instantly earned. The intervening weeks between her surprise debut and the final competition allowed plenty of time for people to tire of the fairy tale and start picking her apart for the sin, it seems, of inauthenticity: She got a better hair cut and more stylish clothes.
In a world of artifice, though, Susan Boyle is uncomfortably real. She lost her cool in the days before the final round of competition. Her meltdown was real. She managed to be gracious when she came in second, but suffered what the show's producers described as an "emotional breakdown" in the days after her defeat. All too real.
Boyle is an unlikely celebrity. Neighbors in her small hometown in Scotland say she was slightly brain-damaged at birth. Her awkward speech, rendered almost incomprehensible to an American audience by a thick brogue, turns to purest clarity in song.
Still, if Boyle's difficulties coping with fame have anything to do with her mental challenges, the difference between her public struggles and those of any number of reality show veterans is only a matter of degree.
Since the Louds first came into our homes as "An American Family" in a PBS documentary series in 1973, reality TV has had a Roman circus quality that sacrifices the inner lives of participants to entertain voyeuristic crowds. The only real offense is to be boring.
"John & Kate Plus 8," a show that gives strangers entry into the day-to-day lives of a large family, fills the bill this season by recording a marriage quite possibly coming apart. Now Nadya Suleman, the Octo Mom of tabloid fame who gave birth to eight this year to expand her brood of children to 14, reportedly has signed a deal for a "quasi-reality TV series" of her own.
It's a living, and a good one apparently.
But a way to live? Not if you want any privacy -- an inestimable blessing not fully appreciated except in its loss.
Boyle was taken by ambulance to a clinic after suffering an anxiety attack the day after a fickle public handed her a second-place finish on "Britain's Got Talent." A spokesman for Cowell says she's "recovering well" from her bruising adventure in search of the big break.
She got it, though she may not fully realize it yet. Hers is the performance that captured people's imagination. Her well-being remains in the news. She's virtually assured a recording contract and, as Cowell's rep noted last week, "Americans absolutely love her."
In reality TV land, I am forced to acknowledge, the talent shows do have a legitimacy I don't see in the rest.
Boyle has a gift, and her dream is to share it. There's nothing wrong with that. I hope she meets with success -- and doesn't lose herself along the way.
Strother is on The Roanoke Times editorial board.
