Article: It wasn't singer Susan Boyle who was ugly on Britain's got talent so much as our react to her- The Guardian, Thursday 16th April 2009
What effect do the two rhetorical questions have on the reader? What tone do they set?
‘Is Susan Boyle
ugly? Or are we?’ This makes the reader
think about how we judge people and whether the comments and doubt that Susan
Boyle could sing made us as the audience the ugly ones. The rhetorical
questions grab our attention and has a direct effect on the reader by using a
personal pronoun ‘we’ to make us feel involved. By starting off by almost
saying that Susan Boyle is ugly, this makes us feel empathy for her. This sets
the tone as quite harsh and critical.
How
would you describe the author’s attitude to Susan Boyle? Support your point
with embedded quotations.
The author is
quite harsh and rude to Susan Boyle, she immediately critisises her appearance
and how she comes across describing her as “small and rather chubby, with a
squashed face, unruly teeth and unkempt hair”. This shows how society sees and
judges people, it shows that we judge people quick by the way they look and
dress, just as we did with Susan Boyle. Although the author seems harsh the way
she talks about her appearance when we read it, it is what most of us were
thinking as she came out on stage preparing to sing.
What
do the details about Susan Boyle’s private life add to our picture of her? Why
has the journalist included them?
This is another
example of how people are quickly judged by others. When Susan talked about her
private life being “unemployed, single, lives with a cat called Pebbles and has
never been kissed” this depicts her as the stereotype of the unsuccessful
candidate. The journalist included these details as it adds to the point of
judging people. Telling about her private life adds to what we had already
judged her by her appearance, it just confirms what many may have already
imagined her life to be like such as “never been kissed” and “lives with a cat
called Pebbles” based on her appearance. It also adds to the expectation of
what she would be like at singing, by her appearance many already thought she
would be bad, and these details adds to that. All this makes the surprise even
bigger.
The
author uses a rhetorical question to begin the second paragraph: explain the
effect that this has on the reader.
By starting off
with a rhetorical question again, as it did in the first paragraph, grabs the
attention of the reader and again gets you thinking. Here it is talking about
why we, as society, think that ugly women can’t do things like pretty girls. By
adding “rather than weeping and wishing they were someone else” makes us think
and have empathy for those who the writer is referring to.
She
mentions several British celebrities (you do not need to know who they are):
what is the purpose of contrasting these men with the statement she makes about
women?
She uses these
male celebrities, who she describes as ugly, to contrast against the point that
women cannot be ugly and successful especially in the media business. She
emphasizes this point by adding the male celebrities to add to this point, by
showing that men can be ugly and successful but women can’t, they have to be
typically beautiful to be successful in the media, otherwise you are not
wanted.
Do you
agree with what she says? Think of the purpowith se of the final two sentences:
what effect do they have on the reader?
Although I do
partly agree with her point that women cant be ugly and successful but men can,
I don’t agree with the harsh tone she puts it across in. Especially in the last
two sentences, she almost critisises those people who are on the news because
something bad has happened to them, and they are the exception of being
typically beautiful and appearing on tv/media.