'Britain's Got Talent' breakout Susan Boyle: Why we watch...and weep

arod:

For those of you who haven’t already seen the Youtube clip, watch that first and then get back to me. It’s impossible to take these things seriously any more. Even while watching, I could see the obvious emotional wrenches - the way they kept the orchestra going through the judges’ comments, the cuts to audience members laughing when she walked out, the fact that she was singing a song with the lyrics “I dreamed a dream in time gone by/When hope was high/And life worth living.” But that didn’t stop me from watching out of morbid curiosity, and crying because I was so glad to be proven wrong.

The flip side of this is that the show set up the mockery of her for the purpose of the later dramatic moment. I can’t countenance the encouragement of ridicule for no good reason. Plus, it makes the later drama ring false.