Dreaming a Dream: Susan Boyle and Celebrity Culture

usan Boyle’s audition of “I Dreamed a Dream” (Les Misérables) on the popular reality format Britain’s Got Talent (2007–09) rapidly became a phenomenal YouTube hit, catapulting her into media visibility on a global scale. Indeed, viewings of her audition performance leapt from 1.5 million to 5 million in under twenty-four hours (Holmwood). But after being variously hailed as an exceptional talent or a “hairy angel” (Smith), the speculation surrounding the forty-eight-year-old Scottish church volunteer took on a different tone as media coverage speculated whether she would “triumph or crack” (Brook and Carrell) as the eve of the final loomed. Debates about the value, “state,” and future of modern fame have become increasingly pervasive in academic and popular media contexts, and “ordinary” people have emerged as a fertile site for the circulation of such discourses. Whether seen as emblematic of the “cultural decline” thesis (in which we have witnessed a “regrettable” depreciation in the currency of fame) or as attesting to the emergence of a “populist democracy” (in which fame has become a social process that pivots on an egalitarian rhetoric of “leveling down”) (Evans), “ordinary” people have been foregrounded as emblematic of “change” in celebrity culture. Yet despite this emphasis on the “new,” it is important to recognize continuity—especially with regard to the mythic or ideological functions of fame. For example, the mediation of the “ordinary” person-turned-star has historically dramatized the possibilities of the success myth (Dyer), in which “lucky breaks,” hard work, “talent,” and “ordinariness” are the central hallmarks of stardom. This is especially true of the reality talent shows such as Pop Idol, X Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent, which (unlike Big Brother, for example) continue to peddle more traditional myths of fame. Indeed, figures such as Boyle are invoked as culturally Dreaming a Dream: Susan Boyle and Celebrity Culture su holmes