Remember the ads in which Angelina Jolie comes out and shames the world for ignoring the plight of refugees? Or the Bono concert for helping AIDS victims? While each of them has done incredible good in the world, there is an argument out there; and it is a fairly strong one that goes like this: Since these celebrities are part of a governing regime of capitalism that causes this poverty in the first place; they are not doing anything substantive to address/ ameliorate poverty. They are just putting a bandage over a wound that is bleeding a patient to death.
Here is a scholarly paper by one of my Ph.D. committee members, who helped me think about this aspect when I was a Ph.D. candidate. I was aware of some of the negative influences of celebrity culture. This whole notion of attention seeking has never appealed to me. While attention seeking for a purpose is OK, most celebrities seek attention for the sake of attention, that has never appealed to me.
Patricia Nickel says in her paper “modern-day parables of philanthropic celebrities powerfully govern the oppositional impulse as they impart as the sense of ‘benevolence’ in the form of an individualized disposition towards well-being and entitlement.” She further argues that this ‘governing regime’ which the celebrities sanitize with their appeals to charity is itself rotten.
In another paper, she, along with another scholar Angela Eikenberry argues that “However, this discourse (of celebrity philanthropy) falsely conveys a community of individuals with access to a venue for shaping social change. Rather than providing an open, discursive space for imagination, philanthropy as it has come to be defined, disguises its own discourse in its portrayal of the mediums of consumption, profit, and media celebration as the basis for benevolent human relations.” So, the issue that is problematic is one of relying on the market to manage relationships of benevolence. The buying of a laptop to eradicate AIDS (Red’s campaign) is problematic, according to Nickel and Eikenberry. This is also problematic given the ‘end of discourse’ that they suggest is going on.
This is also to suggest that while celebrities bring up certain problems, they don’t really talk about the structural problems that caused the crisis we are in, in the first place. This is the real issue with celebrity philanthropy.
While I agree with her assessment that there is an over-reliance on market mechanisms for philanthropic activities, we seem to be enveloped in the market, the world over. There seems to be little space if any for transactions or discourses to occur outside of the market mechanism. How does one impact lives outside of the market mechanism?
There are mechanisms and tools available to reach people and meet their needs. One is to explore traditional systems of charity, for instance, religious giving to one’s place of worship or charitable organizations that are faith-affiliated. My dissertation work looked at some of these possibilities.
Indeed there needs to be greater space for personal benevolence and charity to occur, but the manner and speed with which celebrity philanthropy is occurring is not without its flaws.
