Hit and myth

IN JULY of this year, President Obama was to speak to the American people on prime-time television to announce details of important changes to the healthcare system in the US. He requested the usual 9pm slot from the NBC network. NBC replied by saying that they would be delighted to offer the president the 8pm slot. The president said thanks, but 9pm is the traditional time for addressing the nation. NBC said the 8pm slot is great – you'll love it, Mr President. Obama asked whether there was a problem. NBC said there was indeed a problem, Mr President. And its name was Susan Boyle, writes BRIAN BOYD

That evening at 9pm, NBC was showing America's Got Talentand the exclusive on the show was an interview with the Britain's Got Talentrunner-up. Despite the fact that President Obama knew it was a pre-recorded interview with Boyle, he confessed to NBC that he was a fan and didn't want to upset the viewing public by bumping the very popular show back to a later slot. The president talked to the nation about healthcare reform at 8pm, before being roundly trounced in the ratings by Susan's Boyle pre-recorded interview at 9pm.

By this stage, an estimated 300 million people had watched the now famous YouTube clip of the 48-year-old Scottish singer making her debut on Britain's Got Talenton April 11th. The video was a seven-minute hop, skip and jump into global recognition.

On Monday, Susan Boyle's debut album, I Dreamed A Dream, will be released internationally (it has been available in Ireland since yesterday). On September 4th of this year, though, when the album was pre-listed on the Amazon website, it very quickly broke all records for pre-sales of an album – any album.

Even before the pre-sales, in a mountain-goes-to-Mohammed scenario, Oprah Winfrey sent a film crew to Boyle's hometown of Blackburn in Scotland to interview the star during the run of Britain's Got Talentin April. Boyle couldn't travel to Oprah's studio in Chicago as the producers of the talent show thought it would give her an "unfair advantage" over other competitors on the show – yes, the logic eludes me too.

In June of this year, while his country’s economy was floundering and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were continuing to cause grave concern, the UK prime minister Gordon Brown revealed that he made space in his schedule to make two telephone calls to enquire about Boyle’s state of health following reports she had been admitted to the Priory Clinic which specialises in addiction and mental health treatments.

Obama, Oprah, Gordon Brown. Three hundred million hits on YouTube. History-making pre-sales on Amazon.

This week sees “Exclusives!” in OK! magazine and various tabloids. Celebrity Twitter users are all tweeting ’till they drop; mainstream news schedules are being cleared for Monday’s official release date. All that’s missing is that Osama Bin Laden has added her as a friend on his Facebook page and given the album a five-star review.

BUT WHY WOULDN'Tthe world react in such a manner? This is a beautiful and (in these recession-ravaged times) heart-warming story about how an ugly duckling transformed into a pitch-perfect swan right in front of our very eyes. When she first stepped out in front of the judges on Britain's Got Talent(Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden) in a nondescript dress that screamed "frumpy mad aunt", she came across as gauche and deluded. The urbane and sophisticated judges reacted to her with a distasteful mix of pity and scorn. Audience members are seen rolling their eyes at Boyle's appearance and openly laughing at her as she spoke in wide-eyed excitement about her showbiz dream.

Then she began to sing I Dreamed A Dreamfrom Les Miserables. Jaws dropped, the jeers turned to cheers, shock and surprise (and, later, shame) were evident on the judges' faces. The underdog battled through, put it up to the sneering bullies and got a standing ovation. What a story. It would put the plot of any Broadway or West End musical to shame.

Go back to the first two minutes of the famous YouTube clip where she is mini-profiled. The very first image hundreds of millions of people ever see of Susan Boyle is of her stuffing a sandwich into her mouth in a most “unladylike” manner. The mise en scene continues as she is interviewed to camera. We learn that she is unemployed, lives with her cat and has never been kissed. But in classic showbiz fable fashion she has A Dream. This is all presented to us within 35 seconds. The narrative is then ratcheted up further for dramatic effect when she appears in front of the judges and the audience and is immediately judged – in a very negative manner – solely on her appearance. And, watching at home, we are complicit in all of this.

The first question is from Simon Cowell: “Hi, what’s your name, darling?”. The suffix here is the most patronising term you can use to address a middle-aged woman. Cowell then rolls his eyes in hurt disbelief when Boyle says she is 47 (because she looks years older) and Piers Morgan visibly winces as his eyes travel up and down her body. Boyle then attempts a raunchy pelvic-thrust but all she can manage is a disturbing and perverse approximation of a pelvic-thrust. Cue laughter and disdainful looks. When Boyle then says she’d like to be as successful as Elaine Paige, the camera cuts to an audience member who reacts with distaste bordering on horror that this weird frump on the stage could even dare to emulate the sleek sophistication of such a glamorous performer. Piers Morgan then laughs scornfully as Boyle announces she is going to sing a song from the hugely successful and much admired Les Miserables show. We are now at the very top of the garden path.

IN HIS MASSIVELYinfluential book The Hero with a Thousand Faces(1949), the US mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote about the journey taken by the archetypal hero figure in all mythologies. Campbell details the fixed series of steps taken: the hero starts in the ordinary world; they then receive a call to enter a strange world; the hero must face tasks and trials and survive a severe challenge. If the hero survives, they will receive a great gift.

Campbell called this process the "monomyth" – the cycle of the journey of the hero. He borrowed the term "monomyth" from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Campbell's book is perhaps best known now for being the text George Lucas consulted and borrowed from to create the Star Warsfilms. Lucas freely acknowledges his use of Campbell's work in interviews.

A famous Hollywood producer, Christopher Vogler, advised the Walt Disney studio to use Campbell's book as a guide for scriptwriters – which is why films such as Aladdinand The Lion Kinguse the "monomyth" in their stories. The Harry Potter books follow a similar pattern. It is the template for a very large portion of light entertainment shows and is used in its rawest form by reality TV shows. Witness the "journey" Jade Goody took on Big Brother; the "journey" Gareth Gates and his debilitating stutter took on Pop Idol.

Curiously, neither Goody, Gates nor Boyle won their respective reality competitions but all received an even bigger “gift” afterwards.

If you have ever wondered why so many reality TV contestants over-use the word “journey” when describing their experience, it’s because the producers of the show know it sets off an alert in our minds that a narrative arc is being set up.

Susan Boyle "started in the ordinary world" (a council house in a small Scottish town); she "received the call to enter a strange world" (the Britain's Got Talentregional heats); she "faced tasks and trials and survived a great challenge" (the scorn and mocking laughter of the judges and audience on the show) and she "received a great gift" (worldwide fame and a multimillion pound bank account).

But why Susan Boyle? Why not you or me? Here’s why: she uniquely had not only the requisite back story (council house, learning difficulties, never been kissed etc) but the talent to unlock the “reward”: her remarkable singing voice. And for what it’s worth, her debut album is excellent – as MOR albums go.

She also has a gimlet-eyed ambition. Boyle has been presented to us as an ingénue. She is not. Way before Britain's Got Talent, she had a professional vocal coach. In 1999 she cropped up singing on a charity CD which attracted very positive reviews (albeit in the regional Scottish press). Her Wikipedia entry has it that she attended drama school and had previously appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe.

This is not to say she is in any way a fake or a fraud. The producers of Britain's Got Talentknew they had something special when she walked in the audition door during the untelevised regional heats.

Here was a compelling narrative arc in-waiting that ticked all the mythological boxes and around which a whole massive-ratings show could be built. They merely – as most in the media do – “massaged” her story. Crucially, though, in that famous seven-minute YouTube video they gave us a beautifully condensed jump-edit version of Campbell’s book.

"I suppose it's a bit of a Cinderella story, isn't it?", Susan Boyle said to reporters last week. Cinderella? Isn't that the "classic folk tale which embodies a myth element of unjust oppression and triumphant reward?" The best of luck to her.

Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dreamis on Sony