The infosphere has been abuzz with Susan Boyle's bravura performance on "Britain's Got Talent." Why? Because Boyle, who told Simon Cowell that she wanted to be a famous professional singer [reaction shots of audience smirks; Cowell rolling his eyes] is not conventionally attractive. Looking more like a WWII widow than a pop star, she was obviously dreaming beyond her station. The audience and judges alike sat back ready to laugh.

Of course, Susan proceeded to belt out pure Broadway gold, bringing the audience to its feet and to tears. Gloriously confident and incongruous, she demonstrated that unconventional looks can hide conventional talent. Judge Amanda Holden summed up the reversal when she blinked back tears and admitted that at first, "everyone was against you; I honestly think we were all being very cynical, and...that's the biggest wakeup call ever…." [Annoyed reaction from Simon, since edited out.]

There is no denying that the performance and its reception brought a tear to the eye...just like schlumpy cellphone salesman Paul Potts' 2007 rendition of "Nessun Dorma.” What's interesting is the meaning cohering around the event (which purportedly logged over 40 million hits on YouTube). "Britain's Got Talent" isn't "American Idol" or "Pop Idol." It’s not even “America’s Got Talent,” on which the winner receives $1 million and a chance to perform in Vegas. The UK winners only get £100,000 and a slot in a variety show before the royal family. Yet the expectation is still there: conventionally beautiful voices ought to come out of conventionally beautiful bodies. So, even as the reality talent panoply segregates the older and less seemingly attractive from the idol-wannabe twenty-somethings, it condescends to the possibility of poorly packaged raw talent. The condescension is clearest in Holden's silly notion that anyone had awoken to anything after the song, and in the selective camera/switching/editing work that first sought out doubting and hostile audience members, and surprise and amazement later on. The emotion that the clip evokes is that of the commodity's desire to transcend its earthly bonds and become universally precious: to dream the dream. Cowell's pained reaction is the singular moment of real honesty in the whole charade. No one learned a damn thing. (And that, perhaps, is why that shot has disappeared from the current YouTube clip.)

If anything, we’ve had our illusions confirmed. Boyle knew, along with everyone else, that her looks and voice were incongruous, appropriate for a talent show but not a superstar career. Yet we hope. The New York Times reported Holden declaring, “I won’t let Simon Cowell take her to his dentist...[or]...near his hairdresser…. The minute we turn her into a glamourpuss is when it’s spoilt.” Heaven forefend. In the same article a “feminist writer” exults, “I’d wager that most of our joyful tears were fueled by the moral implicit in Susan’s fairy-tale performance: ‘You can’t tell a book by its cover’…” and that the audience and judges “were initially blinded by entrenched stereotypes of age, class, gender and Western beauty standards...until her book was opened, and everybody saw what was inside.” 1

 Please. Far from showcasing the triumph of the human spirit and a belief that talent will always win out over looks, the program ultimately plays on just the opposite sentiment. If we cry (and I did), it's because the triumph is hollow, because it depends on being the exception that proves the rule: reality TV, even at its most “sincere,” isn’t about celebrating deserving winners, it’s about framing victory within the delicious inevitability of failure. As Anna McCarthy has reminded us, reality TV's “neoliberal theater of suffering” urges us to bring our wounds to the altar, to have them subsumed in the fantasy of personal success…and, I would add, to relish the hubristic failures of those who dare to reach beyond their station. 2  Oh, and by the way, Susan may lose the competition to the very cute twelve-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi, who wowed the judges when he switched mid-performance from covering the very damaged Amy Winehouse to a song by the once-uncorrupted child star Michael Jackson. 

1.  Lyall, Sarah. “Unlikely Singer Is YouTube Sensation.” New York Times 17 April 2009.
 2. McCarthy, Anna. “Reality Television: a Neoliberal Theater of Suffering.” Social Text 93 (25: 4, Winter 2007).