What ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ Truly Boyles Down To

Fair Britannia is at war! All behold, as the drama unfolds in what historians will surely come to call “The Battle of the British Underdogs.” Or maybe they’ll call it “The Great Sob-Story Shootout at Schadenfreude City.”

Granted, no bullets will be fired in this battle, and no blood will be drawn. I write, of course, of the recent developments on the television program “Britain’s Got Talent,” our former colonizers’ “American Idol” equivalent.

By now, you’ve probably seen the all-too-perfect video of contestant Susan Boyle’s crowd-wowing rendition of Les Miserables’ “I Dreamed a Dream.” If you haven’t, perhaps you’ve heard her background story—hailing from Blackburn, Scotland, she is a middle-aged, unemployed charity worker who, after caring for her recently deceased mother, now lives alone with a 10-year-old cat named Peebles. Perhaps you “can’t write this stuff,” but there is no doubt that you can edit it heavily for public consumption.

While Boyle is undoubtedly a talented songstress, it has been the moving narrative behind her performance that has taken Britain and the world by storm. In a recent interview with London’s Daily Mirror, Boyle, who purportedly used to carry her money around the village in an empty whiskey bottle, noted that she thought she looked like “a garage” when she first saw herself on television. The audience and judges in live attendance that day, at least at first, seemed to agree with her self-appraisal. They jeered at the middle-aged Scottish cat lady, audibly laughing when she said that she dreamed of becoming the next Elaine Page, the woman widely known to be the “First Lady of British Musical Theater.”

One could think of her performance as a sort of anti-synesthetic experience, as the sound that emerged from her corpulence was quite the opposite of what she looks like. Boyle’s voice was youthful, absorbing, assured and remarkably feminine—not a set of qualities that could be ascribed to her appearance. It is this dichotomy in particular—notably the seamless transition between initial derision and the audience’s eventual, benevolent embracement of her—that has been the driving force behind Boyle’s recent popularity.

It comes as no surprise then that the most willfully nasty among us—cough, cough, “Got Talent” creator Simon Cowell—seem so drawn to the concept of Susan Boyle. Upon any sort of consideration, however, the idea of “a Susan Boyle” reveals itself to be as artificial as Cowell’s malevolent public persona. Though her story is moving, it has certainly been carefully constructed by the show’s producers to allow Boyle’s supporters to assert their capacity for compassion, their belief in hope and possibility. In all likelihood, the only people attending Susan Boyle’s live performance genuinely surprised by her abilities were members of the audience. The idea that Cowell did not know exactly who Boyle was before she came on stage, what she was capable of, and how she might perform, is entirely unbelievable.

The same goes for the contestant who is widely predicted to be her fiercest competition, 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi. If the concatenation of events that led to The Susan Boyle Phenomenon seemed slightly improbable, Jafargholi’s story approaches science fiction. Seconds into the young boy’s spot-on performance of Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie,” the audience having risen to their feet to clap along, judge Cowell calls for the music to be stopped. “You’ve got this really wrong,” he said, feigning disappointment. “What do you sing apart from that?” In what is surely a bizarre coincidence, the show’s producers happened to have a track of the very backup song the boy wanted to sing, “Who’s Loving You” by the Jackson 5, already cued. While the other judges reacted to the preternaturally talented young crooner by dropping their jaws and slapping their cheeks, Cowell simply sat back in his chair and grinned. Everything had gone as planned.

This season, “Britain’s Got Talent” has two wildly popular contestants on its hands—both of whom, paradoxically, the public considers underdogs—attracting more attention to the show than ever before. Will the public choose Jafargholi, who lives with his single mother and cat? Or Boyle, a single woman, who until recently lived with her mother and cat? Will we choose the mannish old woman or the girlish young boy?

But to think that who wins this fight is up to any of us, to think that the public will be presented with unbiased representations of Boyle and Jafargholi’s talent, is to be naïve.

And isn’t that what great television accomplishes—instilling in us the belief that something is real, allowing us to access the joy that blind belief affords?

The real battle in British television is not between the contestants and the judges, nor is it even between the contestants themselves. The real battle is a war against our better judgment, a struggle to convince us that a woman can emote a love ballad without ever having been kissed (as Ms. Boyle has stated of herself) or that a young boy from a broken home can rise to superstardom. In some viewers, the battle has already been won. Both of the contestants have received praise from twittering couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. Rosie O’Donnell has even, I kid you not, posted a 32 line poem on her website inspired by Boyle entitled “when magic happens.”

But as Jafargholi’s mother Karen noted in a recent interview with The Mirror, Shaheen does not in fact come from “broken home,” as “Talent” producers might slyly imply. While she did separate from the boy’s father a few years back, she’s sure to proclaim that,“It’s all amicable... we’re not another sob story.”

This is not to say that we should deny our reactions to Boyle or Jafargholi’s performances or that we shouldn’t tune in and enjoy shows like “Britain’s Got Talent.” But if we come to actually believe in the reality of reality television, unlimitedly accessing the joy of that “blind belief,” we risk abandoning what is actually real. Or at least misplacing it for a while.

—Staff writer Ruben L. Davis can be reached at rldavis@fas.harvard.edu.