It doesnt have to be instead of falling down that slippery slope, you could also choose to investigate capitalism, which is the ultimate cause of most of these disasters in the first place. How Misguided Celebrity Activism Does More Harm Than Good Locking broken people up for decades often makes them worse. I hope it will help us to reflect on our collective role in transforming harmful and outdated movement practices and cultures, which we are all responsible for. Away from the fantasy world of easy-to-understand, black-and-white, single-story views of a conflict lays a world of complexity, depth and uncertainty. This often leaves us as followers believing that we somehow have to find a way to become, reinvent, or evolve ourselves into the movement leaders we admire all on our own; No frameworks, no guidance, no rest, and no mistakes. Study Resources. They also come out of personal experience with social dynamics Ive witnessed, been impacted by, and been a participant of that I believe would strengthen our social justice movements to change. It may be convenient for a while, giving us a fabricated sense of security, but I fear as we continue to collectively refuse to hold these uncomfortable truths, and include them in the image we build of our leaders ultimately, we are opening gaps for potential harm to go unacknowledged, and are creating opportunities for our communities to disempower, silence, and neglect those speaking out against harm caused by our leaders. After all, social media is programmed to de-center collective efforts, and hyper-fixate on individual achievements. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Activism Cons. Its easy for us to support #metoo advocates and survivors of abuse until it interferes with our campaign plans, our community events, our organizational structure. This article includes content hosted on counter.theconversation.edu.au. T he world of social media was a little quieter than usual on Wednesday: Celebrities ranging from Kim Kardashian West to Mark Ruffalo "froze . Celebrity activism: Help or hindrance? - My Media Blog Whose interests are they serving? We are weeding out unsustainable results disguised as solutions, and encouraging each other to envision futures that are breath-taking and irresistible before they are reasonable or palatable to discouraging perspectives or oppressive forces. We have to acknowledge celebrity culture and how it stretches well beyond formal celebrities and into our movements, organizations, groups, relationships just as punishment does. It tends to fracture our movements by creating a culture that rewards aggressive competition, under-recognizes collaboration, and glorifies suffering for the sake of productivity through lack of self-care and rest, neglecting personal boundaries, and undervaluing community care practices, facilitating burn out, often leading to further harm. In particular, I would like to acknowledge and express my appreciations for Sariah Metcalfe, Ian Matchett, Teiana McGahey and Owolabi Aboyade for your support, input, and collaboration, and for being continuous thought partners with me in a struggle towards liberation. Celebrity-led campaigns do often prove to be highly successful in generating broad public support. The conclusion . I admired their ability to financially sustain themselves from their work before celebrating their contributions to principled struggle, and I was often more focused on their personal lifestyle choices rather than their commitment to liberation. Others, however, view celebrity activists as inspirational role models who are truly passionate about their causes. She also designed the Fenty Beauty line, providing accessible makeup to all skin tones, an unjust rarity in the beauty industry. Use photos or images only if you are certain they are in the creative commons or have received permission from us. The latest generation of American celebrity activists has most commonly knocked at the doors of western governments, demanding changes in policy towards their chosen cause clbre. As Mingus states in her quote found above, this pushes us back into binary thinking. Our fascination with pre-packaged solutions and our short attention spans are incompatible with appreciation for true complexity, humility and unpredictability. You find like-minded people. It can look like us applauding our leaders for not caring for themselves, for not taking breaks, for suffering, a capitalist, ableist perspective on productivity that reverberates out into our movements and communities. To first lay some groundwork, mainstream celebrity culture is rooted in violent and oppressive systems, and perpetuates falsehoods that argue human connection and value is most efficiently achieved and effectively experienced through commodified goods, individual success, and popularity. Issues of sustainability, effectiveness, community ownership, local relevance, and adaptability to change, which are the lifeblood of any conflict transformation approach, are hardly taken in considerations by these broad top-down solutions. This can also look like believing a celebrity activists analysis and beliefs to be irrefutable as well as universally applicable and relevant. email Oprah Winfrey at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley-on-Klip, South Africa. Additionally, when we consider how we relate to someone and their work we can ask ourselves whether we are seeking to replicate or replace the role someone holds, or motivated to expand, adopt, and build alongside an area of work, value, or practice. Just who I am. If you feel invested in a cause, engage it with all your passion, but tread carefully. Putting someone on a pedestal is not caring for them. Unfortunately, many of the policies and remedies promoted by this ever-growing influx of celebrity activists have been heavily criticized for being paternalistic, detached from reality and often dangerously counterproductive. Restorative justice is a proven holistic approach to addressing criminal behavior. "While it's good all of these celebrities stepped up, they inadvertently pinpointed a major issue in celebrity activism: White celebs get the privilege to take their time to speak about issues that don't affect them. When the main outcome we are looking for in our leaders a social justice version of the same entertainment, inspiration, and endorphin rush we find by following mainstream celebrities and their lives, we are limiting everyone involved while increasing avenues for potential harm. The gap between the haves and the have nots must be narrowed significantly. Blackout Tuesday: Why posting a black image could be doing more harm Introduced in 2010 and championed by celebrities from Ben Affleck to Nicole Richie, the ruling required companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals originating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country. Star power - but does the intervention of George Clooney etc.do more harm than good? It can also look like de-prioritizing building our own analysis of the issues and vision towards liberation, an exciting, gratifying part of social justice movements. Away from the fantasy world of easy-to-understand, black-and-white, single-story views of a conflict lays a world of complexity, depth and uncertainty. Ahead of going public, offering their insights and opinions, even those celebrities most willing to exercise their right to freedom of expression are likely to have sought wise counsel. It erases away our humanity: our human complexities and contradictions; our human capacity for growth, change and transformation, our human capacity for both harm and love. Mia Mingus (IG). The video had profoundly upset a significant amount of those present that evening, and a riot broke out. Finally, I found your closing remarks on what would be good to consider when getting involved in any cause very thought-provoking. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. Activists do more harm than good to their cause. - Reddit However, critics argue that some celebrities are doing more harm than good and question where their true motivations lie. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. One way is a disinvestment in ones own capabilities and potential. Many of the policies promoted by the ever-growing influx of celebrity activists have been paternalistic, detached from reality and counterproductive. In April, Emma Thompson flew in from America to attend the Extinction Rebellion protests that shut down London, despite the group insisting that flights only be used for emergencies. Whose interests are they serving? They can use their fame to make international events known. Celebrity activists provide us with a powerful outlet for our guilty consciences and our self-serving views of history. Speaking from personal experience and drawing from conversations Ive had with a few trusted comrades, when organizers are working with less than we need, running on fumes while facing problems bigger than all of us, it is often difficult to accept our own limitations. Does celebrity activism do more harm than good? Between the 1930s and 1950s, suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst fought for a fascist-free, and later independent, Ethiopia, and a few decades later Bob Geldof and Band Aid raised 30m for the victims of the countrys famine. The tragedy behind these sorts of campaigns is that they are motivated by the belief that problems around the world remain unresolved due to the lack of international awareness of their existence or global commitment to resolve them. Or create a free account to access more articles, Can Celebrity Activism Campaigns on Social Media Actually Make a Difference? Our lack in stronger organizations and structures to support organizing for collective vision leads to a tendency towards individualistic activism. Mother Jones recently published an ironic map of the African countries celebrities have claimed through their charity work: Richard Branson, Oprah and Will Smith have South Africa, while Botswana is Kim Kardashians. When we mainly value our work by how visible it is to another person, or how others view our work in relation to someone elses, it becomes easy to lose touch with ourselves, making it difficult for us to identify and trust our own experiences, and capabilities. Their almost complete confidence in their predictions and analyses, combined with the allure of celebrity, emboldens them to leap at the opportunity to promote what they consider to be the solutions for conflicts whose complexities they only superficially grasp. The process by which our movements transition leaders into celebrity revolutionaries is heavily based on race, skin tone, ability status, immigration status, English-speaking capability, income and gender presentation, prioritizing cis-gendered people. And, most importantly, why should you become involved? It also isolates leaders from their communities and makes it difficult for us (their communities, neighbors, friends, and families) to see when they are struggling and offer care. This is the point at which most of us become silent or look in another direction. To find articles by the same author, please click on the name. mastodon I agree with the previous comments about appearing to paint all work done by famous personalities with the same brush. [] TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE Why Celebrity Activism Does Go to this article []. Taylor Swift understands the influence of her massive fanbase and ensures that she sets a positive example in supporting those at risk or in need, Taylor Swifts lyrical choice of GLAAD instead of glad proves her commitment to interweaving her activism with her artistry, Release date of You Need to Calm Down music video commodifies Pride Month, Taylor Swifts rivalries in her Reputation album and her support of the LGBTQ+ community might be part of the same career strategy, Taylor Swift is a powerful ally of the LGBTQIA+ community, but there are members of the community that are actually icons, Many celebrities engage in activism, but often their work is misinformed and causes more harm than good, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/10/celebrity-activism-africa-live-aid, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/i-take-responsibility-and-the-limits-of-celebrity-activism, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/celebrities-impact-top-2017-activism/, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a32741399/rihanna-shuts-down-brands-blackout-tuesday/, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/17/18682588/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down-gay-anthem. Disengaging from our leaders humanity also means disengaging from their ability to change, evolve, and transform. It pushes non-profits to compromise on their goals and ability to remain genuinely accountable to the communities they are working with, and present themselves as independent, innovative, and visionary while also presenting as measurable and palatable. And when we dont or cant prioritize maintaining collective structures, it becomes all but impossible to not focus on individuals. It was presented by the Enough Project as an essential precursor to preventing conflict and sexual violence in the DRC. I believe we are already more in sync than we think, and as we continue to build, this connection will only deepen as it already has been for decades. (A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times on Tuesday that it had no comment about the situation.). Causes are to celebrities what corporate social responsibility is to business Between the 1930s and 1950s, suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst fought for a fascist-free, and later independent, Ethiopia,. In addition to everything named here, applying celebrity culture to our movement spaces weighs heavily on how much and if we value care, healing, and other under-recognized and historically-feminized work including logistics planning, cleaning and space-creating, etc. But, as were constantly told in the climate debate, actions are what matter, and words are meaningless if we see that even the speaker doesnt appear to believe them. We see these forms of engagement lead to fragmented relationships, uncoordinated movements, and the formation of social cliques. If you do decide to take that leap, then start by listening rather than preaching, facilitating rather than commanding, cooperating rather than defeating, creating organically rather than planning mechanically, and seeking to unsettle the status quo rather than trying to control it in its entirety. We will try to apply solutions that may have worked in well in their specific situational, geographic, or cultural context without considering why applying it to our situation may lead to a different outcome or require some adjusting and rebuilding in order to succeed. We can begin to see clearly the ways that celebrity culture, idolization and individualism impact how we value ourselves, our comrades, and less visible leaders when we reflect on how we discuss and relate to many of our most visible movement leaders. Once we make this shift in thinking, our perception transitions from engaging with someone as a movement leader into viewing them as a celebrity activist. This is because they draw on the self-serving guilt trips that lead many people to believe that their privileged position has invested them with the burden and the responsibility to save those less fortunate from their plight. Who really benefits from celebrity activism? | Celebrity | The Guardian When we dont see the principled and discipled collective actions many of our leaders engaged in prior to becoming well-known, which significantly contributed to the sharpness of their analysis, the impact of their actions, and the consistency and longevity of their participation in anti-oppressive struggles, we paint a picture that our leader somehow became this way on their own, overnight. Whether its Black Lives Matter or the #MeToo movement, people are taking to social media to voice their opinions and really call attention to some of the issues that have been problematic in U.S. society in past years and now, Tyree says. This guy who comes from Marcy Projects, whos made it to these places were playing Yankee Stadium tonight. That awareness is the first step towards making a change. It is harmful and dehumanizes all involved. The video had profoundly upset a significant amount of those present that evening, and a riot broke out. And then theres Jay Z, who took the time to respond to Harry Belafontes criticism that todays celebrities have turned their back on social responsibility with this: This is going to sound arrogant, but my presence is charity. Tens of trillions of dollars are stashed away in them, which could be used to eradicate poverty and promote a green and sustainable economy in the world. are not abolished once and for all?
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