Ordinary-person-turned-celeb Susan Boyle presents us with yet another interesting case study in web-enhanced fame. She occupies a space at the intersection of a lot of different kinds of appeals. Its key to remember that her fame is only enhanced by the web. The real media venue that is equally (or more, or less?) responsible for her fame is Britain's Got Talent, the British version of American Idol (or is AI the American version of BGT?). Boyle's rise to fame is in keeping w/ talent shows' examination of what how cultures define talent. I used to be very dismissive of these shows, but really, when you consider what they say about how we judge people and how popular they are, they're quite interesting.
Do we defer to experts? Yes, partially, but we also love to hate them. Is talent acquired through hard work or are you born with it? Not sure, really, but we like to think that there's at least some persistence against the odds invovled in acheiving success. Do we base our judgment of people on their similarities to us? Sometimes. Do we base it on looks? Usually, but not this time, and apparently there's nothing we love more than praising someone who doesn't fit the mold of the attractive pop star. In doing so, we are praising ourselves for not being superficial (nevermind the fact that we're still judging someone based on an arbitrarily chosen valued ability. God forbid if the woman had been ugly and hadn't been able to sing).
I would argue that Boyle is also in sync with another trend, this one related to popularity on the web: freak appeal. I've heard a few comparisons of Boyle to William Hung, although all the people making those comparisons note the important difference: Hung was talentless, Boyle is incredibly talented. They're both outcasts in some sense. I think Boyle is what some of us wish the William Hungs of the world could be - someone who seems like an ugly duckling at first, but then turns out to be a swan. I also think that we feel that this makes it okay to laugh at freaks like Hung b/c we can hold out hope that Hung will eventually turn into a swan or that we'll eventually uncover the hidden talents that Hung always had (maybe he's brilliant at math, to use a stereotype about asians). There's a kind of ugly-person tokenism going on with Boyle.
When we say that "anyone can make it in America/Britain/anywhere-else," we're identifying the characteristics to which our cultures assign value. Despite being ugly or poor or black or old or blind or a recovering drug addict or gay or transgender or whatever, this person has succeeded. Whether its seeing Susan Boyle become famous in a week or seeing a black man get elected president, seeing a person succeed against the odds simultaneously convinces us that there's less true inequity in the world (if there was more, then this person wouldn't have made it), convinces us that we're not part of reinforcing that inequity, and convinces us that despite our shortcomings, we can make it, too. This can lead us to believe that inequities are a thing of the past, and this may instill false hope among many less-talented people (there's a novelty effect built into the success of the first disadvantaged person to achieve, one that wears off quickly and doesn't apply to the next few people out of the pipline). As long as cultures have hierarchies that are based on identifiable characteristics, these stories will remain resonant with audiences.
That's not to say that the success-against-the-odds stories don't have positive effects on audiences; only that there may be some negative ones as well. How could we determine whether the good outweighed the bad? Sound like another research project!
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