Susan Boyle
Photograph by: Getty Images, Getty Images
What do you mean there’s no Santa Claus?!
It’s worse than that. Internet sensation Susan Boyle, who garnered at least 30 million YouTube views with her Cinderella performance on Britain’s Got Talent, is a player in a giant fraud.
Or is she? She can surely sing, as evidenced by the tears that flooded the world as the plain Scottish lass sang the Les Miserables hit I Dreamed a Dream. Suddenly, the 47-year-old self-proclaimed virgin became everybody’s sweetheart, the kind that brings warmth in the middle of a frosty recession.
If the Boyle tour de force was a publicity ploy, it rocked. From nowhere, she was everywhere: Oprah, Larry King, newscasts around the globe. Billions of hearts warmed.
Then, out of New York City, among others, a giant wet blanket was thrown to cool the planet’s ardour. Maureen Callahan in the New York Post noted that the Boyle event was too perfect: "A dowdy, 47-year-old virgin named Susan Boyle takes the stage, wearing her low heels and her Sunday best.
"The crowd laughs at her, and Boyle -- how devastating -- laughs along. She says she wants to be a professional singer; people laugh harder and louder. They point. It’s grammar school and the Roman Colosseum combined. Simon Cowell -- panellist and show creator -- rolls his eyes. And then Susan Boyle sings."
The same conspiracy theories rumbled online. Notes "Rick" on Yahoo:
1) All of these shows have tryouts to filter out thousands of aspiring hacks before going on international television. Simon and the other judges were listening to her for the first time. This is not normal.
2) The next sign to look for is the clumsy humpty-dumpty music played in the background at the beginning while she eats a doughnut. . . . The audience must have the perception of her being totally hopeless before she sings for maximum affect.
3) The orchestra’s music continues to play in the background even while the judges give their verdicts. As far as I know, this is the ONLY time this has ever happened in the history of this show. Simon’s vote is saved for last and suspiciously timed out perfectly before the crescendo of the orchestra. This is exactly how a movie would plan the same effect to help jerk a few extra tears from the audience.
Still, if it wasn’t the spontaneous "reality" it pretended to be, the show was staged to perfection. And in these perilous times, give a fairy tale its due.
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