Celebrity Politicians
I started thinking about celebrities and politics watching Team America, the movie that ridicules everything yet somehow ends by vindicating Hollywood’s happy endings and America’s strong arm tactics on the world stage. Kim Jong Il, after all, turns out to be a sentient trilobite from another planet and fortunately, the dicks are there to save us from both the deluded pussy actors (who are all killed) and the asshole dictators (who are allowed to escape). It was the drivel about dicks, assholes and pussies which really won the day, surprising when you consider that our hero’s first reaction, when he heard about them in the pub, was to vomit.
Perhaps I have missed our heroic moviemakers’ deep philosophical message or perhaps I should have just sat back and enjoyed myself. The movie did have its funny moments, especially when dealing with what men will do for sex (‘I promise you I will never die’), but I was surprised at the violence against celebrities. What sort of regime kills people for speaking out of turn, whether misguided or not?
I have seen a lot of articles, both in newspapers and on the Internet, professing outrage at celebrities who embrace political activism. ‘Actor-vists’ is the latest, not quite demeaning, epithet used. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald last October (2005) quoted Marc Brennan of the University of Sydney as saying “some actors buy into their own celebrity…and feel entitled to speak publicly about anything and everything, whether it’s relevant to acting or not”. He thinks they should be taken down a peg or two and complains, “I don’t understand why, just because you’re an actor, you should be able to air your opinions in public. You hear actors speaking out far more than academics do.”
This raises some interesting questions, for example, is an academic who specialises in media studies, as does Dr Brennan, any more qualified than say, George Clooney, Bob Geldorf or Angelina Jolie, to speak about politics in Africa or the Middle East? Is he likely to attract as large an audience or persuade the public to consider these issues? And where celebrity academics do speak out, aren’t they more easily confined to a limited audience by the supposed intelligence of their debate? Especially when their message is not generally welcome, as for example, Noam Chomsky.
‘Is the compassionate celebrity the new public pest?’ asks Julietta Jameson in the Sydney Morning Herald of June 2006. And pests they must be, why Julianne Moore’s campaigning on behalf of a sick boy, whose father she met, lead to an increase of one million dollars in funding for the boy’s disease. Though surely far more money than that is spent monthly on tanks and fighter aircraft.
Her colleague, Brendan O’Neill, whose article was published in the Australian (June 2006), is outraged at what he calls celebrity colonialism. He is referring to the Jolie-Pitt takeover of a Namibian resort for the last month of Jolie’s pregnancy and the willingness of the Namibian government to accommodate them by creating a no-fly zone over the resort and allowing them to prevent certain journalists from entering the country. O’Neill calls it an “unholy marriage of today’s celebrity obsession with backwater politics of a small African state.”
Leaving aside the fact that Namibia is probably larger than O’Neill’s native Great Britain, it seems to me that the bulk of his argument consists of ridiculing everyone he can connect to his line of argument. Pitt and Jolie haven’t made a good film between them in at least five years, Namibia is a backwater state trying to encourage tourism by playing up to two Hollywood bigwigs and Bono and Geldorf have reduced Africa’s problems to a simple morality tale. Exactly how he doesn’t make clear.
To be fair, these articles do raise some important issues; my dissatisfaction is more in how these issues are used as an argument for denigrating celebrities and celebrity activism, rather than providing a considered argument as to whether or not a celebrity should use his or her ability to attract publicity in order to promote a favourite cause or long held belief. Each of the articles began by suggesting that celebrity promotion of charity or political opinion is outrageous and only introduced issues of concern well into the body of the article.
So why should actors be able to air their opinions in public when the rest of us can’t. The truth is they can because people are listening. More specifically, the media is listening and the media is interested in reporting on the activities of these people. The media is interested in reporting on the activities of actors because their activities sell newspapers, cosmetics, mobile phones and just about everything else, including politics and charities. When O’Neill complains that Namibia is using Jolie and Pitt to encourage tourism, he is probably right. My problem is that I can’t see the difference between Namibia’s actions and those of Australia which used Crocodile Dundee star, Paul Hogan, to promote the charms of a visit downunder. Well, there is one difference, as a first world nation, the Australian government could afford to pay cash.
Movie stars and media personalities are promoted so they can sell things. Why it is acceptable for Catherine Zeta Jones to appear in advertisements promoting mobile phones but outrageous when Bono does the same and gives the profits to charity? Or is it just unacceptable when he talks about giving the profits to help feed malnourished children in Africa? But if not Bono, or Angelina Jolie or Bob Geldorf, who will make us care about these children who do not have the same opportunities for education, career or health as most children of first world nations?
In becoming an activist for one or more causes, are celebrities using the misfortunes of others to “soothe the dreadful ache of being rich, gorgeous and famous”. When she first embraced activism, Jolie was reported to have said that she wanted to show people that she was interested in more than the latest hairstyle.
Public embracing of political and charity causes can have a beneficial effect on a star’s image. A case in point is George Clooney. Not so long ago, his publicity focussed on the women who couldn’t hold him and the motorbikes which could. Then he was making a highly publicised trip to Darfur and holding rallies at the White House. Clooney tends to put his career behind his mouth in the movies he makes: Syriana, which makes you wonder exactly who created the situation in the Middle East (hint: it wasn’t the Jews or the terrorists), Good Night, and Good Luck, which reminds you that the US government has tried to fool the people before and even an army action flick, like Three Kings, which asks the question as to exactly what motivates the US army, politicians, commanders and soldiers, when they intervene in places like Iraq. Which is why his sudden call for US intervention in Darfur seems not to have been thought through as thoroughly as it might have been. Sadly, I haven’t heard that it’s done much for the people of Darfur, though perhaps that simply hasn’t been publicised.
Ultimately, if celebrity angst is what it takes to help people’s suffering be noticed, this is still not necessarily a bad thing. Of far greater concern, in my opinion, is the fact that charities have difficulty getting media time or space without a celebrity figurehead. This implies a type of ‘arms’ race where the organisation with the most popular figurehead gets the money, irrespective of the organisation’s perceived value or track record in it’s chosen activity. Kind of like a populist political process without the intelligent debate and without a look at the consequences of a organisation’s activities. Which is how, as O’Neill mentions, Western wildlife watchers can stop local Africans from hunting the wildlife they might use for food.
Jameson’s article quotes Bollywood actor, Rahul Bose: “we need to focus on the ramifications of celebrity social activism – the emergence of the culture of lazy opinion-forming”. Leaving aside the fact that Bose is yet another actor with an opinion, I think he makes a good point. When a celebrity sells a mobile phone, the advertiser is encouraging us to let the celebrity think for us. How is it different when the celebrity sells a charity or a political opinion? It seems to me the culture of lazy opinion-forming goes deeper than just the determination of our political opinions. Do we really ask questions about the quality of our mobile phones, their effects on our health of their use or the value in purchasing the latest model as long us our favourite celebrity is telling us to buy it? Is it becoming as cool to support a certain charity, or hold a particular political opinion, as it is to own a specific mobile phone?
Politicians acknowledge a reality where celebrities sell political opinions. Celebrities have appeared for both sides in recent US elections. Politicians have appeared as guests on TV shows and been interviewed for reasons not related to their political activity. In fact, to all intents and purposes, politicians are celebrities; they have no privacy and are constantly followed by photographers and newshounds. The only celebrity thing they don’t do is sell mobile phones, yet. I do recall a former governor of the Australian Reserve Bank hawking something financial on TV a few years back.
Behind O’Neill’s sarcasm, and his exclamations regarding the leverage granted celebrities by African nations intent on selling tourism and helping their own nationals, appears to be a concern that the serious business of politics and the governing of nations is becoming a celebrity circus. In that I think he is right, it just seems to me that this circus did not begin when Jolie and Pitt went to Namibia or even when Bono and Geldorf began working for charity.
The question is where do we stop using celebrities to influence public opinion. Do we ask them to refrain from stating their political opinions in public? Do we ask them to stop attending political rallies? Should they say no to appearances for charity? Or do we tell them to stop selling mobile phones and cosmetics and thereby enabling companies everywhere to pull the wool over our eyes when it comes to quality?