Today, over at the Guardian there is a provocative opinion editorial by noted British thespian Colin Firth entitled 'Like it or not, I'm involved', offering a defense of celebrity activism. He is actually very circumspect about the roles assumed, undertaken, and/or thrust upon celebrities in contemporary politics. As he says:
- If your profession gives you a public voice, you have a new
relationship with those who don't. Your voice becomes a cherished
commodity. Not for its merits but for its sheer volume. You may have
nothing to say, but those who do – the wise, the desperate and the
better informed – all clamour to make use of your media connection.
Fair enough. It is hard to fault organizations who are attempting to draw attention to pressing global issues for using any means necessary to get media coverage. Celebrities--from the A list to the D list--certainly do, for better or for worse, command a great deal of media attention. But as the comments section to Firth's op ed suggests, many members of the general public resent being lectured at by a famous millionaire whose grasp of the issues would generously receive 2.2 result for a first year introductory university module in the subject area. And of course, this is compounded when said famous millionaire cannot even walk the walk themselves (cough...Bono...cough).
The real shame may be that the rise of celebrity activists--keeping in mind that this is a far longer-standing phenomenon than people think--is a concurrent decline in public intellectuals. By public intellectuals, I mean those members of academia who are called upon by the media in prime venues to share information, to summarize recent innovations generated through research, and to provide guidance on the kinds of questions people ought to be asking themselves with respect to pressing problems.
Rather than hearing the same old tired--and quite frankly status quo oriented--solutions to insecurity and underdevelopment in Africa from Bono, Bob Geldof, Angelina Jolie, or whoever else has been commandeered to publicize the cause for that week, public understanding and debate would be better served by hearing the ideas and opinions of leading thinkers like Mark Duffield, Achille Mbembe, and Alex de Waal. When it comes to the Middle East why not contact Eyal Weizman or Derek Gregory before Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn?
Unfortunately, in the words, of the late Neil Postman, it may just be that we are more interested in 'amusing ourselves to death' than engaging in the hard graft of gaining a deep appreciation of tough issues from those who have a knowledge that extends well beyond being jetted in and out of a complex emergency by a well-meaning charity group.
Photo credit to Mr. Ducke for 'Knowledge' via a Creative Commons License.
