Navigation

Primary Navigation

Secondary Navigation

Talking Politics

Back to Talking Politics home

Search

What Susan Boyle says about the UK

Mon Jun 01 12:10PM

Susan Boyle is on her way to the Priory clinic today, just another shattered victim of our obsession with celebrity.

Earlier in the weekend, Gordon Brown had this to say: "I hope Susan Boyle is OK because she is a really, really nice person and I think she will do well."

It's the latest prime ministerial intervention in celebrity. During her dying days, Jade Goody was treated to his approval, when he praised her determination "to help her family". A while earlier, he had claimed to wake up to the Arctic Monkeys every morning, a fact most people treated with considerable disbelief.

None of this chimes particularly well with his insistence Britain had started to overcome celebrity, just before becoming prime minister.

Keen to highlight his superiority over Tony Blair, the then-chancellor said: "I think we're moving from this period when, if you like, celebrity matters, when people have become famous for being famous."

If only that was true.

This country has developed an increasingly unhealthy relationship with celebrity. We have always built people up to knock them down, but we now appear to be doing it with a ruthless speed and an utter indifference to their mental state.

Watching Boyle appear on Britain's Got Talent over the weekend was a case in point. After a week of newspaper stories about her increasingly deranged behaviour, she appeared fragile and vulnerable. Her expressions were nervous and indicated a desperation to please, while her mannerisms came across as odd and jolted.

She was, for all to see, just another victim of the celebrity machine. It sucks them in, uses them, and then spits them out: used and worthless.

Some of the blame can be placed on the format of reality television. Big Brother set the tone a decade ago, when it filmed people in an enclosed space for days on end and forced them to vote against each other, before the audience themselves chose who got kicked out. Then talent shows, heavily reliant on a judging panel made up of, ironically, thoroughly talentless but hugely vindictive narcissists, sealed the deal.

Contestants were ushered on, so the audience could bask in the stream of vitriolic unpleasantness emitted from the judges. Gone was politeness, or caring for people's feelings. Cruelty and sneering were in fashion.

But it's not just the format. We are responsible as well. Our obsession with celebrity has now reached a kind of tipping point. Even the expenses scandal was thought appropriate for celebrity fixes, with Esther Rantzen and other D-listers quickly cited as replacements for MPs. What on earth would make us think they would be any less greedy, or incompetent? What possible reason could there be to presume such a thing, unless the country has gradually come to the conclusion that 'celebrity=good', as a form of a priori reasoning.

Broadsheets and glossy celebrity mags seem to live a world apart, but they are in fact two sides of the same coin.

As we become increasingly disillusioned with politics, we turn to the empty world of celebrity to distract ourselves. But in this world, somewhere, are real people. They have feelings, and hopes and aspirations. They are very much like you and I.

When we package them up and sell them - much as Boyle was constructed as a fairy story character - and then ruthlessly tear them down, we damage them. And we also damage ourselves.

When the television shows and magazines and newspapers allow people to talk to others this way - calling Heather Mills a 'slag', for instance - it has a direct effect on the way people treat each other in society.

Children take their cue from those on television, and what they read. And adults, in a slower, less obvious way, do the same.

This isn't a cry for a more family-friendly, Mary Whitehouse style censorship campaign. It's just a request for a little less cruelty, and a little more compassion, in the way we treat the people who enter the news agenda.

David Cameron hasn't made it part of his 'Broken Britain' agenda, even though the two facts are intimately connected. Gordon Brown will only discuss celebrity to jump on the latest bandwagon.

A real political leader would challenge our views, and try to forge something a little healthier. Both for the celebrities, and for Britain.

Ian Dunt

Comments61 - 70 of 1002

The headline is a rhetorical question - it answers itself. It could also be written as “What the phenomenon of Susan Boyle says about the UK.”
For my other comments see posting 29

From wilhelm_v_pegasus on Mon Jun 01 01:24PM
Report abuse
yet another person suffers at the hands of the celebrity obsessives. so many many people have suffered - and what is it teaching our young????????

From tee_whitt on Mon Jun 01 01:26PM
Report abuse
The celebrity culture we have now is quite disgusting. It picks vulnerable people, exploits them, promising them fame and riches without telling them the downside, and then dumps them. Having worked in the music business until quite recently, it was perfectly apparent to me that Susan, despite having a moderately good voice, does not seem to have the strength of character to become a "star". She seeems to be far too vulnerable, naive and unused to coping with the very real pressures of the music business (and yes, it is a business). To really cope in the music business - as well as having some talent (performing and creative) you have to be very determined and utterly ruthless, as it is the most competitive business I know of. She has been portrayed as a bit of a novelty act (the soubriquet "hairy angel" makes my point - not a very endearing description), and so she has been set up to knock down. She may very well make a some of money from recordings - but performing on CD does not in itself generate huge money unless you are a songwriter as well, and have publishing copyright. I don't think she will be able to cope with touring / live performing. She doesn't seem mentally strong enough to cope with these pressures - and without touring to promote albums she's dead in the water! Very few artists can maintain a good career without live performances - Elvis and The Beatles achieved this only after years or touring when they were established acts. Susan has not served that gruelling apprenticeship and quite frankly I can't see her lasting the course. Sad really as she seems to have established some popularity although I'm not sure if that will last - viewers are a notoriously transient lot and change allegiances quickly. Good luck to her - but I think she has been exploited, and others may well earn a lot from her "fame". She will never be able to walk down to street again without people pointing at her, or worse. It's all very sad.

From bill.phipps on Mon Jun 01 01:26PM
Report abuse
I laugh at Ian Dunt and other reporters attempting to keep up with the storey of Susan Boyle. For the first time the Internet has lead the storey and created a star without any involvement from reporters. The media then spent the next few weeks desperately trying to be involved, desperately trying to find something to write to be involved, then desperately attempting to destroy what they had not created.
The media industry of old is dead, the newspaper industry is gone. Why? because people can return comment we can read diatribe and call it as it is

From y251457 on Mon Jun 01 01:26PM
Report abuse
All this fuss over one singer when all over the world people are being crushed politically, tortured and maimed and in this country kids are losing their lives through beatings and stabbings - get a life, if you have any compassion put it in the right place

From nannynoodles07 on Mon Jun 01 01:29PM
Report abuse
... # 52 who want to sell up & move away... im right behind you !! First chance i get im out of this dump.... wish i could belt a song out make a few £££££s on BGT then buy a lovely house somewhere hot & peaceful !!

From elainetorrington579 on Mon Jun 01 01:29PM
Report abuse
I think the title "What Susan Boyle says about the UK" isn't really literally what she said but rather what celebrities represent (say) about this country.
We're being dumbed down, quite worryingly in fact.

From ed_zep_2 on Mon Jun 01 01:30PM
Report abuse
Well-written article, apart from the fact we never discovered what Susan Boyle thought of the UK... Yes, we've become a nation of curtain-twitchers, hungry for the latest scintilating gossip. The media should perhaps start taking the higher road and stop feeding our obsession. Nah..silly me..There's money in them thar headlines! Right? Alternative is, of course, to stop tuning in to Big Brother etc and stop buying those magazines and newspapers until they clean up their act.

From godsonclaire on Mon Jun 01 01:31PM
Report abuse
I agree that this obsessive behaviour to make and break people in the spotlight is doing this countrys image no good... and is teaching our young people the wrong values in life.

From michelle_cantliff on Mon Jun 01 01:32PM
Report abuse
The media are a funny thing and our fascination with it! I have been saying to my hubby for the last few weeks that the media and the way we treat it is getting out of hand. The media feed off us and we feed off the media, it is a vicious circle. The media scare me because now they are becoming judge and jury and are like some scary sci-fi movie from the 70's. I don't have the answer but it is all getting out of hand and we are destroying our children’s intellect and by doing this, their future...

From teresaellenwilson on Mon Jun 01 01:33PM
Report abuse