I very well might have posted this weblog before, but since the 'search' function on this board is dodgy - or my understanding of it is - I will make the error of commission rather than one of omission, in the event that some of our newer members have not read it.

It was written when the youtube count was bobbing around 20 million views.

Enjoy!

http://www.betanews.com/article/YouT...-at-snark/1239
872165

Angela Gunn
The YouTube Symphony Orchestra gathered last night at Carnegie Hall to play an
original Tan Dun piece composed specifically for the global competition that
brought the group together. It's lovely. But I'm willing to bet that instead you
were listening to a heretofore obscure singer absolutely flatten a roomful of
doubters with a show tune.

Like a lot of us, I've been watching the Susan Boyle video repeatedly this week,
trying to get at what it means for the Internet to have taken to heart, as the
Britain's Got Talent audience took to heart, a middle-aged Scotswoman with
ungroomed eyebrows and a frumpy Best Dress and a voice that seems to have
broken something that needed breaking in hearts around the world.

And I think I'm onto it. It's not only her voice, though were it only her voice that
would be enough -- a gorgeous, full, confident instrument that did with the
difficult "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables what most of us couldn't do
with "Happy Birthday." It's not only that we in the audience saw a star-is-born
event that's better and funnier and sadder than anything we've seen in the movies.
It's not only the sense that if this woman could step out from an exceedingly
ordinary life and be extraordinary, and not only silence her detractors but make
them love her, we might too (though that's close to the point). It's not the canny
song choice, pairing a song about a woman whose life is a shambles with... well, a
47-year-old unemployed spinster who lives alone with her cat.

It's seeing those damned critics shut down, especially the judging panel -- reduced
to irrelevance in the face of majestic talent. I think that the video of Miss Boyle
has taken off (and how, with 19.5 million plays and counting over 21 duplicate videos
on YouTube since Saturday) because it feels wonderful for anyone who's ever felt
uncool and unattractive to see something sincere and beautiful knock the snark
right out of The Beautiful People Who Run Stuff. When I replay the video, I'm
listening to Miss Boyle, but I'm watching these three plasticky judges go from
condescension to surprise to bated-breath joy in under five minutes. Even Simon
Cowell, that bitchy gym-ratty thing, can't manage to do much more than grin by
the end. And it feels good to see -- to watch the judging stooges having a genuine
experience, and to have it ourselves, and to feel that the homely-but-talented
people we are all inside are being, for a few moments, less oppressed by figures of
beauty.

...

The nasty audience behavior was real, but the judges on the show's panel could also barely contain their disdain when she stepped up. And it feels so nice to see the condescending hipster-blogger "No" wilt in the face of a big, inescapable "Yes" in the key of G. Online, that rejection of cynicism seems to have struck a nerve with literally tens of thousands of commenters on YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere.

Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly, with whose opinions I so rarely agree
as to make the event probably worth a story all by itself, writes that for her, Miss
Boyle's performance "reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until
tears sprang to my eyes how desperately I need that corrective..." Sure, and let
me take the thought a step farther. The performance, and the reactions we see to
it on the video, reframe how we consume beauty in our yeah-impress-me-now-double-that popular culture, and that's due in no small part to the profusion of No rather than Yes. Which, in turn, is something bad we did to ourselves with the Net.

The Internet has provided both marvelous opportunities for creative folk to bring
their art to the people, and unprecedented power for random buttheads to tear
those folk down. ...
...

There are two gentlemen to the side of the stage during Miss Boyle's performance
-- emcees, I guess -- and alone of everyone there who was not a 47-year-old
Scottish contestant in a beige dress, they're the only ones who seem to be in her
corner from the start. They're necessary to the clip after the fist viewing,
because we know what we're sending Miss Boyle out to face and, even though we
know she'll prevail, we like her too much to set her adrift among those sharks
entirely alone. We know what that's like. We're online in the sea of snark every
day, refusing to be broken, to our detriment.