Scapegoatiana: On Using Celebrities As Distractions

Amid the height of her recent tour, Ariana Grande announced a hiatus from the public eye and sharing of her artistry. Her announcement follows a storm of viral scrutiny on her appearance and lifestyle. In my own day-to-day, I had found myself bombarded with speculation of what exactly is going on in the pop star’s personal life—from those around me, who flippantly charge her with disorders in casual conversation, or via flashy bolded headlines in reputable news sources. This has more to do than with Grande herself, however. I’d like to guide the reader's focal point a step backwards, rather than play a guessing game of what I believe she does in her private time. Why is it that people feel entitled to her private life, and the life of celebrities generally, in the first place?

It isn’t lost on many that society holds celebrities to a very high standard when it comes to their behaviour, appearance, and artistry. The way it is commonly framed, celebrities are essentially ‘granted’ their success, fame, status, and income from their collective of fans. Their success is often framed as an alienable resource which is actually owned by fans on account of their giving attention to—and thus success to—said celebrities. To that end, this resource can be ‘taken back’ upon deemably undesirable behaviour, also known as the phenomenon of “cancel culture.” If a celebrity is not behaving to the standards of the people, the media moreover, their image is quickly spoiled—overtime creating a domino effect on their success, fame, income, etc. in the most extreme cases. This type of boycotting is known to be extremely effective when in full force, and has been putting real pressure on those famous people for a while now. In some cases, this is channelled into pressure regarding political issues. For recent example, take the controversy surrounding Ed Sheeran’s “LOOP” tour. It all began when opening artist Macklemore, set to continue performing on the tour among a long list of other artists, advocated for Palestine on stage. He was subsequently dropped from the tour, due to promoter Robert Kraft, says Sheeran. This led to a chain reaction of sorts in which several supporting acts, and even his own backing band chose to willingly step down the tour themselves. While Sheeran has made the decision to continue the tour, and by no means has lost his fame, the tour itself has been significantly impacted, and he indeed has taken the heat. In the next show at Philadelphia, he began by addressing the situation, describing his real consideration of cancelling the tour amid the backlash. However, cancel culture does not limit itself to this kind of restorative action. In other cases, the boycotting regards different social issues pertaining to celebrities. While the ability to call out the support and implications thereof of a genocide is incredibly important, this apparatus of control over celebrities via shaping the attention they receive ends in artists being treated as property. 

Take again for example, Ariana Grande. The conversation around her focuses on more than her appearance superficially. While she was completing her own tour, the conversation had devolved into more serious argument on why she is supposedly “promoting” harmful behaviour to her mostly young, female fans. In many of the discussions I have witnessed, it is no longer about whether people think she is struggling with her health in the first place. It is indeed about how the pictures she posts, clothes she wears, and behaviour more generally are all “flexing” her supposed behaviour to her fans—crudely referred to as “body checking.” However, all of the hate she receives is not going to end in something such as further solidarity for Palestine, like with the LOOP tour—it mostly boils down to plain harassment. On one hand, I can never seem to look past the fact that we’re referring to a real person—stranger—with feelings, as everyone else seems to be able to do so easily. On the other, the very absurdity of that reality makes me question why people seem to think Grande owes them their definition of visible health anyways? Furthermore, why they are not nearly as inquisitive about the trending prevalence of a dangerous eating culture in the first place? Even more abstractly, why are they not nearly as passionate about speculating on the behaviours of their politicians?

Many people, myself included, would point to this situation as a larger indicator to the world we live in today. This point is not new by any means, but with this think piece I hope to prompt others to turn over that stone once and again. In today’s time, it is so easy to feel helpless. We watch as our increasingly uncertain global political climate continues to take steps in directions almost unfathomable. We watch as almost no real action is taken in response to these steps. We watch as attempts at real action get almost immediately squashed by those in systems of power we cannot quite grasp ourselves. I often come to think of debilitating scrutiny over Ariana Grande, and celebrities more generally, as a means of relief over the fear we may all feel living in the present day. The one that a lot of us may also be ignoring. With the climate of everything currently, it is easy to feel as though us individuals do not have true control over what happens to them—and maybe that lack of control manifests in other ways where people believe they have power. To that end, it often may appear that the boycotting apparatus I have described makes more of an obvious impact than does petitioning elected officials—or even protesting against them. But in fairness, I believe that a majority of people have simply given up hope in doing so. Watching the events of the world unfurl the way they have the last couple years would by all means make the average person feel hopeless. But I sometimes suspect that is the intention—to make people stop trying. To make matters worse, in recent times we have seen a crisis in the undervaluing of accessible and diverse education, coupled with the use of AI which has further undermined individual critical thinking. Often times I believe this is what has fueled the stark socio-political division I see amongst people as a general. Perhaps it is time to ‘touch grass’ and consider more carefully the innately human things we have outsourced to technology. To divert collective energy more so towards political systems which are in fact meant to serve us. By all means, we should still be calling out unjust actions, like in the events of the LOOP tour, especially because it does work and has brought more attention to solidarity with Palestine. However, I believe people would benefit from turning their attention towards the governments, structures, organizations, companies, politicians, etc. who are complicit in the first place. To pressure them with the same passion and ‘cancel’ the attention and monetization given to them, instead. 

The next time you yourself, or to your witness, find entertainment in discussing why a celebrity has done what they did and how they could be doing more, I urge you to continue that thought into why we have to turn to them for these things in the first place? Why does the fact that they’re more accessible to us than most of the people who actually sit ‘in the room where it happens’ go over everyone’s heads? Why might people feel they are entitled to that person’s livelihood, and maybe not feel so entitled to the work their political representatives do?