As you may have heard, Susan Boyle lost in the final of Britain’s Got Talent to a dance troupe called Diversity.
Her story is well known. Embodying both the Cinderella and Ugly Duckling myth, she was plucked from solitude and obscurity, and rendered an inspirational lightning rod to legions of people who needed to believe. Her first performance on Britain’s Got Talent has received over 25 million hits.
The story of a 48 year-old spinster, who might still, against all odds and circumstance, ascend to great heights due to an undiscovered gift of talent, proved irresistible. The public, led by the cynical and manipulative governance of the media, made her what they needed her to be.
The stress of what she must have endured is truly inconceivable. Instantly, she was a global phenomenon, subject to withering criticism and hysterical praise. I know nothing about what sort of person the woman actually is, or what sort of life she truly led prior to her stratospheric rise to fame. However, it’s been reported that after her mother’s death, whom she cared for until she passed away in 2007, she would not come out of her house for three or four days at a time, choosing instead to keep the company of her cat, Pebbles. As a child she was diagnosed with a learning disability, having suffered oxygen deprivation at birth, and was bullied and nicknamed “Susie Simple.”
Taken from such a background and then transformed into a redemptive myth, she began to crack under the intense and disorienting pressure. I truly believe that celebrity is a curse, and to impose that curse on somebody like Boyle, who was so apparently ill-prepared to deal with it, seems cruel.
As the finale of the show approached, Boyle began to behave in an erratic fashion. There were reports that she was throwing tantrums and that in one instance, in a hotel, the police had to be called after she unleashed a profane tirade at two strangers who had been taunting her. After her loss, she wept for 24 hours and was later found in a daze, wandering about the lobby of her hotel room. It was at this point, after the ratings had poured in, that the producers called in the doctors. She asked the paramedics to call her home so that she could hear her cat purr, and then after a psychiatric assessment, was admitted to the Priory Clinic for treatment.
This is extraordinarily sad, and perhaps even tragic, but it’s not entirely surprising. We, the public, made a pet out of Susan Boyle, amplifying her talent and sculpting her narrative to suit our own optimistic construct. In the end, it wasn’t Boyle’s best interests we had at heart, but our own.