Susan Boyle: a cautionary tale for a celebrity age

LONDON – Talent show contestant Susan Boyle’s giddying rise from unemployed Scottish church volunteer to global superstar has come at a price, in what is being seen by some as a cautionary tale for the celebrity age.

On the way up, the 48-year-old’s performance last month of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ on television series ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ was downloaded nearly 200 million times on the Internet, and within days Boyle was headline news around the world.
Camera crews camped outside the home where she lived alone with her cat; Larry King and Oprah Winfrey invited her on to their US shows and tabloid newspapers tracked her every move.
But as the pressure built ahead of Saturday’s final, which many, but not all, expected Boyle to win, she came close to buckling under the pressure. She was reduced to tears, threw a tantrum and threatened to pull out of the show.
After coming second to dance troupe Diversity, the singer was on Sunday admitted to a clinic, The Priory, in London that treats people suffering from exhaustion and with mental health problems.
The Sun tabloid reported she had an ’emotional breakdown’.
The Priory is part of an exclusive chain of private clinics known for treating troubled performers including Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty.
“Being famous is not all it’s cracked up to be, and the idea that you can have a personal life and a media life is often pretty conflicting,” said David Moxon, a health psychologist who specialises in stress.
“It must be difficult to walk down the street and be mobbed by people.
“I don’t think Boyle did that (deliberately pursued celebrity). She was pursuing a love of singing that she had and that is the sad part of this story. But it is a cautionary tale for people and it shows fame has its price.”
Moxon and others said people’s reaction to pressure was impossible to predict. The fact that Boyle was starved of oxygen at birth leading to learning difficulties, according to show judge Piers Morgan, may have affected her ability to cope.
Morgan described her as being like “a frightened rabbit in headlights” and said she had considered quitting the show.
BACKLASH
Boyle’s friend and former voice coach Fred O’Neil said she may have been “completely overwhelmed” by the attention focused on her.
“It’s such a tragic situation, a woman who really just loves to sing, an innocent woman really, who is just caught up in this fame game,” he told the BBC.
“I just hope that whatever fame that she has got out of this will eventually bring her some happiness. Obviously at the present time it is not.”
Morgan, who backed Boyle throughout ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, put some of the blame for her travails on the media and public. The former tabloid newspaper editor felt that some people had turned against the singer having built her into a household name.
“Show business is a fickle business, and the reality TV end of it even more so,” Morgan said in his blog on the show’s website, written before Boyle was admitted to a clinic.
“The British, and I’m as guilty as everyone … like nothing better than building people up, and knocking ’em down again.”
Boyle’s dishevelled appearance and idiosyncratic manner challenged people’s notion of what a celebrity should be, prompting commentators to ask why people were so surprised that a woman dubbed ‘frumpy’ and a ‘hairy angel’ should be so gifted.
Although she failed to win ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, and in spite of questions over her ability to cope with pressure, experts predict a bright future for the singer.
“I predict she will have a huge selling album out in a few months, and more to follow,” Morgan said, amid reports that Cowell’s record label is about to sign Boyle.
British bookmakers are already taking bets on Boyle recording a No 1 UK and US chart hit and appearing in a West End musical before the year is out.
In a sign of how big the story has become, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he had spoken to the show’s judges about Boyle because he “wanted to be sure that she was OK”, he told ITV television yesterday.
Morgan said Boyle was “essentially fine”.
“I believe she’s going to have a few days of rest, get better, get her energy back, get some sleep, eat properly again and then live her real dream,” he told Sky News television.
“I think that Susan will get back soon and get into a studio and record an album that I would imagine in the next few months is going to be one of the biggest selling albums of the year.
“That will be the real Susan Boyle fairytale.” – Nampa-Reuters-AFP