The Political Economy of Celebrity Activism

Nathan Farrell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317198482
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited collection brings together scholarly works of both a theoretical and empirical nature to critically analyse the forms and functions of the contemporary celebrity activist and to examine how these intersect with the political economic structures in which celebrity activists operate.

Collectively, the volume illuminates some of the inherent tensions between the ethos of solidarity and compassion that the celebrity activist works to generate on the one hand and the processes of corporate sponsorship and discourses of individualism upon which the celebrity often depends, on the other. By offering empirical case studies that situate instances of celebrity activism within specific political contexts, the collection highlights how celebrity activism intersects with some of the underlying structures of gender politics and political discourses such as neoliberalism. In addition, the volume discusses how the tensions between, for example, individualism and solidarity can raise important questions about the authenticity of individual celebrity activists and how individual celebrity activists work, with varying degrees of success, to obfuscate such tensions and obscure the potential contradictions of their work.

This book will be of great interest to students and academics within the fields of politics, international development, political communication, social movements, activism studies, and celebrity culture.

1
Introduction

“Getting busy with the fizzy” – Johansson, SodaStream, and Oxfam: exploring the political economics of celebrity activism

Nathan Farrell

In January 2014, Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson found herself embroiled in something of a public relations difficulty. The controversy that enveloped her was caused by insurmountable tensions between different components of her public persona: her performances as an actor, her social activism, and her role as a commercial brand endorser. In terms of her acting career, Johansson had demonstrated her ability in more critically acclaimed, independent productions such as Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006) and Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), as well as more art house films such as Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013). In addition, she is also an integral member of the ensemble cast within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that, at the time, was being developed into a lucrative, ongoing film franchise. With a bankable box office appeal, Johansson had established herself as a noteworthy actor of her generation. At the same time, she was serving as a global ambassador for the aid agency, Oxfam. Beginning her association with the NGO in 2005, Johansson was a suitable celebrity spokesperson for Oxfam, as she presented a fresh-faced image that resonated well with a young demographic. More importantly, her value as an asset to Oxfam was projected to increase as her acting career prospered and her celebrity status rose. With Oxfam, Johansson embarked on campaigns concerning topics such as the education of girls in Sri Lanka and India, in which she raised publicity by visiting schools whose reconstruction, following the 2004 Asian Tsunami, Oxfam had funded. She also helped raise money for the charity by taking part in an auction for the opportunity to meet with her at the premier of one of her films (BBC 2008). In addition, she has lent her support to a range of other causes, charitable foundations, and not-for-profit campaigns and has publicly supported Democratic presidential nominees in the 2004, 2008, and 2016 US presidential elections.

While Johansson makes regular public appearances to support social causes, she also engages in commercial endorsements. Some of the more notable include her work for Dolce and Gabbana perfume and SodaStream, manufacturers of domestic soft drinks machines. It is this latter commercial relationship that proved to be difficult. Oxfam, along with a range of other NGOs, opposes the colonisation by Israel of Palestinian land in the West Bank, believing Israeli ‘settlements’ there to be illegal and that they ‘further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we [Oxfam] work to support’ (Oxfam 2014). Consequently, Oxfam opposes trade with companies operating from occupied Palestinian territory. However, SodaStream operated a factory within this location, and this, understandably, created a conflict of interest for Johansson. Within public discourse, she was said to have ‘attract[ed] the wrath of activists’ (Child 2014), and among the more vocal Palestinian human rights campaigners, she was dubbed Oxfam’s ‘Ambassador of Oppression’ (Abunimah 2014). As her simultaneous relationships with both institutions were seemingly untenable, Johansson decided to end her ambassadorship with Oxfam, tendering her resignation from the role, which the organisation duly accepted.

The example of Johansson, Oxfam, and SodaStream reveals some very important aspects of celebrity in contemporary Western society, insomuch that it draws attention to the potential dangers facing the socially active celebrity and highlights some of the possible tensions between the different components from which celebrity is derived.¹ The potential for such problems to impact the ways that activist campaigns are conceived and practiced, as well as the successes or failures they might produce is quite significant, particularly when one considers how widespread the inclusion of celebrities in these campaigns has become. Indeed, as Jo Littler astutely observes ‘offering support for global charities has become both practically part of the contemporary celebrity job description and a hallmark of the established star’ (Littler 2008, 238).

There is something about celebrity and the very condition of fame in late modernity that lends itself to the potential problems that Johansson’s example demonstrates. Understanding what that ‘something’ is and the ways in which it might be problematic is one of the aims of this collection. As such, this introductory chapter first outlines how celebrities have come to be seen by some as legitimate political spokespeople, how the structures of the Western media landscape have facilitated this, and how the nature of contemporary celebrity has, in some ways, necessitated it. This, in turn, warrants unpacking the concept of ‘celebrity’ and the political economy of celebrity before the chapter explores how this can inform celebrity activism and create the type of predicament in which Johansson found herself.

The power and legitimacy of the celebrity activist

As noted above, the appearance of entertainment celebrities within activist campaigns is increasingly common. In addition, such individuals, as Mark Wheeler (2013, 114) notes, may engage in numerous different roles with these organisations. Where some act as patrons who lend their name to an organisation, for example, David Attenborough’s work with the World Land Trust, others are more readily identifiable as spokespeople who create visibility for an organisation by publicly speaking on its behalf, such as Joanna Lumley’s work with the Gurkha Justice Campaign. Some celebrities function as fundraisers for causes by prompting the public to donate funds, for example, Tom Hiddleston’s work with UNICEF, while others take a more central role in the governance of organisations, as evidenced by the Leonardo DiCaprio’s work with his self-named foundation.² The idea of celebrities – that is, individuals who are ‘highly visible through the media’ due to activities or achievements within the sports or entertainment industries (Turner 2013, 3) – enjoying such positions within campaigns might seem singularly peculiar. Indeed, many of them lack even the most rudimentary qualifications or experience in, for example, politics, diplomacy, or conservation science. However, looked at another way, there is something expected and, one might even proffer, inevitable about the alignment of the worlds of celebrity and activism within Western democracies. This is not merely an outcome of the seeming ubiquity of celebrity. Instead it is indicative, first, of the ways in which celebrity reflects and reinforces some of the overarching political and economic discourses that shape contemporary Western societies, and, second, how celebrity is intertwined with the ways in which the media functions as the key arena of politics.

The social prominence of celebrity is, in part, an outcome of its relations to some of the core tenets of contemporary Western societies, namely democracy and consumer capitalism. Both democracy and consumer capitalism, which P. David Marshall cites as the ‘twinned discourses of modernity’ (2006, 635), place significant value on the individual, conceived as the citizen and consumer, respectively. Individualism, as Marshall argues, is both ‘one of the ideological mainstays of consumer capitalism and one of the ideological mainstays of how democracy is conceived’ (2006, 635). Accordingly, in a society that valorises individualism, a space is created for the celebrity, as a form of hyper-individual, to become a key cultural focus. Celebrities represent individual agency writ large. They are, as Marshall suggests, ‘given greater presence and a wider scope of activity and agency than are those who make up the rest of the population. They are allowed to move on the public stage while the rest of us watch’ (Marshall 2014, xlvii). Through their movements on the public stage, celebrities can exert influence by performing as role models ‘represent[ing] typical ways of behaving, feeling and thinking in contemporary society’ (Dyer 2004 [1986], 18). Simultaneously, celebrities reflect aspects of the majority from whom they seemingly stand in distinction. This is because, on a practical level, the successful celebrity must in some way reflect the interests of their public to sustain their audience’s attention and maintain their position of fame. However, deeper than this, Marshall points towards an affective function of celebrity manifested in the ways celebrities ‘embody the sentiments of an audience’ (Marshall 2014, 203). This begins to outline the contours of the power of celebrity in terms of its ‘capacity to house conceptions of individuality and simultaneously to embody or help embody “collective configurations” [such as audiences] of the social world’ (Marshall 2014, xlix–l). This power can be mobilised for political ends, particularly when considering celebrities’ capacity to embody their audience’s concerns about political, social, or environmental problems and their desire that appropriate solutions to such problems are enacted.

The political mobilisation of celebrities is also underpinned by a concurrent decline in public trust of, and interest in, traditional political figures and institutions (McAllister 2009; Siaroff 2009). John Corner and Dick Pels describe a movement away from ‘the entrenched oppositions of between traditional “isms” and their institutionalisation in the form of party politics [… and towards] more eclectic, fluid, issue specific and personality-bound forms of political recognition’ (Corner and Pels 2003, 7). Rather than institutions and organisations as the prime vehicles for organising and mobilising mass political sentiment, individuals pronouncing on single cause issues offer a key means of embodying the concerns of mass publics. Of course, the latter have not supplanted the former as, for example, membership of traditional political parties still exists. Importantly, ‘[i]n a world where entangling alliances are the rule, these individuals [celebrity activists] are as close to free agents as one can find’ (West 2008, 81), and this contributes to them potentially being ‘considered more trustworthy and less partisan’ (West 2008, 79). The perceived legitimacy of celebrity activists by their audience rests on the celebrity’s ability to assume the appearance of outsiders to formal politics who manage to infiltrate elite political institutions. They are, as Andrew Cooper says of Bono, ‘outsider[s] who moved inside’ (Cooper 2008, 42). Despite their mingling with the upper echelons of elite politics, they are not of such institutions. Instead, such celebrities act on behalf of their audience, giving form to their political sentiments and potentially speaking truth to power.

The prominence and legitimacy afforded to celebrity activists is also an outcome of the forms and structures of the media in which they operate. The media – particularly broadcast, print, and, more recently, social media – have become key arenas in which democratic politics is enacted (Dahlgren 2009). Such media provide important platforms for reaching the electorate and for politicians, political candidates, and social campaigners to secure public favour. If one considers the speed of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the instantaneous nature of social media, it is evident that the political commentator has less time available to contribute to political discourse and less time to react to ongoing political events. Moreover, as social media has effectively widened access to public debates, there is an increasing amount of media content, and accordingly, this has heightened the competition for audience attention (van Krieken 2012). Within this attention economy (Davenport and Beck 2001), less time is afforded to spell out complex policy platforms, for example, and consequently political pronouncements are more frequently packaged as soundbites (Franklin 2004).

It is in this environment that the personality of the individual political speaker and their political style – that is, the aesthetic qualities they present – become paramount (Pels 2003). This is, in part, because these personal qualities can stand in as a proxy for political sentiments. For example, a political candidate being seen with their family can suggest to the electorate an adherence to family values (Street 2004). Such developments, in part, facilitate the emergence of what can be thought of as the personalisation of politics (McAllister 2009) and explain the incentives on offer to the politician that uses ‘the forms and associations of celebrity culture’ as a means of political self-promotion (Street 2004, 437).

This is not to say that political personalities did not exist prior to the emergence of modern democracy or the mass media, nor that they are a phenomenon exclusive to democratic systems, particularly if one considers the cult of personality evident in authoritarian regimes. Instead it highlights how certain technologies and structures of the media have helped to centralise personality within political discourse. Moreover, it creates a political environment in which it is advantageous for a politician, candidate, or activist to possess some form of stage presence, personal charisma, or mediacentric appearance. That celebrities such as musicians and actors are trained in such skills helps to cement their position as political agents and legitimise their role as activists.

Activism is broadly understood here as socially, politically, or environmentally minded actions that, to borrow from Alastair Fuad-Luke, seeks to ‘catalyse, encourage or bring about change, in order to elicit social, cultural and/or political transformations’ (Fuad-Luke 2009, 6).³ The discussion of celebrity activism above has the potential to paint the celebrity as an important component within activist campaigns and a key agent of activist causes, a function that prompts Mark Wheeler to ask if ‘celebrities can use their reputations and charisma to invigorate politics with new ideas’ (Wheeler 2013, 12). However, things are not quite so simple. The possibilities of the celebrity activist are rendered more complicated – indeed more precarious – when one considers the commodified nature of celebrities.

Celebrity is an outcome of an industrial process. As Milly Williamson concisely puts it, it ‘is a form of fame commensurate with capitalist society’ (Williamson 2016, 1). Celebrities are, of course, real people.⁴ However, a celebrity – as they exist in the media – is the result of a process of selection by media industry agents from the multitude of potential applicants, followed by careful training and grooming by various media professionals. In other words, celebrities are the outcome of an investment of labour that creates a tradeable commodity. More than this, the celebrity represents a unique form of self-actualising commodity, as the celebrity plays a part in their own rendering as a tradeable object. What Turner refers to as the ‘celebrity-commodity’ (2013, 37) is, simultaneously, an individual with a degree of agency, a cultural worker who is paid for their labour, and the entity upon which that labour is exerted.

A celebrity must somehow negotiate a balance between their own individuality and interests, the interests of their audience, those of the industrial networks of which they form a part, and the political causes they might represent. These interests may not necessarily be congruous – as Johansson’s example suggests – and this points towards the precarious position of some celebrities. In addition, it goes some way towards explaining the short-lived nature of specific celebrity careers (Redmond 2014, 69). It also illuminates why some celebrities choose to involve themselves with activist campaigns. It is certainly plausible that, given the public attention that celebrities can generate, they might feel obliged to direct this attention towards a worthy cause. The musician John Legen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figure
• List of contributors
• Series editors’ preface
• 1 Introduction: “Getting busy with the fizzy” – Johansson, SodaStream, and Oxfam: exploring the political economics of celebrity activism
• 2 Celebrity activism and the making of solidarity capital
• 3 Funded by philanthropy, founded for activism: Nobel Peace Prize laureates and their organisations’ political endeavours
• 4 The value-form of persona: celebrity scandal, activism, and commodities
• 5 ‘Bring back our girls’: social celebrity, digital activism, and new femininity
• 6 Promoting peace and coffee pods: George Clooney, Nespresso activist
• 7 All under the Same Sky? Celebrity philanthropy and the transnational market for women’s empowerment
• 8 Co-opting the ‘Losers’: Bob Geldof and neoliberal activism after the financial crisis
• 9 Authentic activism: challenges of an environmental celebrity
• 10 Celebrity activism and revolution: the problem of truth and the limits of performativity
• Index