Susan Boyle: Judged by Beauty

Bruce Hamill wrote a brilliant and condemning post about our reaction to Susan Boyle at Per Crucem ad Lucem which is well worth the read.

We realized for a moment our own judgment. We were the judges judged by her truth. And then another thing happened. We began to tell stories which justified the world we are a part of. We could not face the judgment that her unveiling made upon our world, so we turned the attention on her heroism, in such a way that we could in fact adore her as an appropriate idol and icon of our time. Like Pilate we avert our gaze from the truth that judges us. Where Pilate asks the dialectical question, we renarrated the familiar ‘rags to riches’ tale in which there is no judgment or surprise and Susan’s triumph is the logical conclusion of our meritocracy. She becomes the hero so we can avoid the spotlight being turned on us the audience and the world of American Idol-atry that we participate in.

Yet it goes beyond this does it not? Sure there is a rewriting of the narrative in order that we can sweep the judgment underneath the rug, a re-narration that is still based in the meritocracy. We are ready and willing to accept the 'rags to riches' tale that is being spun out because what came out of her mouth when she began to sing, made up for the lack of outer beauty. We can handle substituting one beauty for another, but how different would her story be (if there were one at all) if when she opened her mouth to sing a squawking horrendous sound came out?

Are we truly a society that cannot see Susan Boyle as another beloved human being who is on the same earth, walking the same paths we're walking, trying to find herself as the rest of us are trying to find ourselves?