Should We Care About Celebrities?
On problematic famous people and honoring the artistic process.
At some point in the last few decades, we all started collectively caring about what celebrities has to say about political issues. This isn’t inherently good or inherently bad, but more often than not, it leads to a lot of disappointment. Recently, many young people’s hearts were shattered by a list of celebrities who signed an open letter of support for Israel’s brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Videos of people essentially saying “NO, NOT THEM TOO!!” about Jack Black, Zoe Saldana, Regina Spektor, Aubrey Plaza, Jordan Peele, and more have been leaving my generation feeling disillusioned with the idea that celebrities are trustworthy, kind people with similar politics to them.
And I think that’s awesome.
As much as it makes me feel like an edgy teenager to write this, I never really cared about the internal lives of the rich and famous. For my whole life, I’ve ended my trips to the grocery store gazing in amazement at the magazines near the checkout line proclaiming how many pounds of fat that a still-incredibly-traditionally-attractive actress had put on, wondering how could anybody possibly give a shit? Maybe it’s the neurodivergency (an inability to comprehend the social norm that apparently we’re all supposed to care about which famous people are dating), maybe it’s the asexuality (a complete lack of intrigue about the internal lives of people I would never truly find attractive), or maybe I’m just a big-brain smartie-pants who’s simply more morally evolved than people who read celebrity gossip (untrue; more on that later).
The standard leftist and/or edgy teen critique of fame is this: celebrities exist to uphold the status quo by serving as the friendly, hot faces for evil corporations, or distracting us from the ills of the world entirely. The fact that a TV celebrity recently became our president Says Something about the vapid, surface-level nature of our society, rich people (including wealthy artists) are evil capitalists who exploit the working class to consolidate wealth, money should stay out of politics, nobody should be able to have influence on politics merely because they’re physically attractive, and the people who our society should truly respect and/or elect are teachers, scientists/engineers, and the qualified experts who make our society run.
But that’s too easy. Even if I mostly agree. I want to honor the fact that good artists should receive a certain level of respect in society, and that good work has been done by famous people. I would not say that ACAB (All Celebrities Are Bastards) but instead I’ve come to a position of neutrality: if a famous person is cool, that’s great I guess, but if a famous person is not cool, I simply do not care…
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