When it comes to political discussion, celebrities often happen to be the most active ones. Even though, whatever it is that a celebrity thinks and says is one’s own opinion, their presence and influence on people’s lives affect others’ opinion, too. Some people think that it’s in their best interest to be politically active, because it makes their fans more active, which in turn brings new fans. They aren’t at fault here, since engagement is one of the things that bring celebrities profit and fame. Like Kanye West, famous rapper and producer, openly supporting president Donald Trump. By doing so he still is as popular as always (maybe a bit less popular) even though his career as a rap and pop artist is declining.
On the other hand, some people like to think that not every celebrity is doing this just for the sake of themselves. They think some celebrities really do care about others, and that they’re using their influence on others for a greater good. One example of this would be George Lucas, the director of the original Star Wars trilogy. He had donated $4,250,000 to Lucas Film Foundation, which then granted it to The George Lucas Educational Foundation to help younger generation, in 2011 (Antunes).
Celebrities’ ways of tackling politics come in a variety of different ways. The most common ones are using social media to express their opinion on a certain topic or a certain someone, like tweeting, livestreaming, etc. and expressing their opinion on a non-digital platform like an award acceptance speech, public gathering, or a charity event. Donating money, pushing political agendas, and rallying against a politician or a government are also some ways celebrities take part in political engagement. For example, Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin is an anti-Trump celebrity. When asked about Donald Trump and his presidency he openly responded, ‘Everywhere he’s gone, he’s abused power and people who are less powerful than him.’ Katie Couric, in 2017. Sometimes, actively supporting or disapproving a politician can be too much for some of the celebrities. So, it’s no surprise that a lot of celebrities choose to do the common ones rather than the latter ones.
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Because the impact they have on others’ lives is so vital, celebrities should continue being political no matter what they’re doing, whether it’s right or wrong. Them just talking about politics brings forth the problems we face, motivates us to speak up for ourselves, lets everyone know that our opinions matter, and makes the chances of the problem being solved higher, whether it’s successful or not.
Not every celebrity succeeds in what they’re trying to do and achieve in political actions. They don’t have to succeed or to be right, because at the end of the day it’s their decision. But the influence they have on the general population is so critical that their take on the issue brings more supporters and disapprovers, shining light on the issue, whether they intended to or not. A lot of celebrities have become increasingly vocal about political issues, over the years. Recently, female celebrities have started to demand equal rights and equal pay. One of the incidents that pushed this movement to be this active was when Michelle Williams, Hollywood actress, was found getting paid significantly smaller amount than her costar Mark Whalberg, in the reshoots of the multiple academy awards nominated movie All the Money in the World, in 2017. This was just one of the thousands of cases where a female celebrity was getting paid significantly smaller than their male counterpart. It was one of the hundreds, if not thousands of the cases. All females started to get vocal about their own similar situation and the issue seems like it is going to get better.
The people who have faith in celebrities, point out the things celebrities are talking about, or being a part in and appreciates them. There are a few different ways that the celebrities are trying to make people more active and one of the major contributors is social media. As social media got bigger and bigger people started to look into social media for opinions and news rather than newspapers, magazines, and online websites like BBC, CNN etc. One example is the Twitter. Nowadays it seems like after every political event there’s going to be a Twitter battle between celebrities and people. Some agree, some disagree. There really aren’t anything you can do. Exactly when did twitter become a huge political field is unclear, but it has become an unstoppable force, in recent years.
Celebrities often choose events, shows, or awards to openly discuss about politics, because of the amount of publication and attention these things usually get. Award season is the season where Hollywood stars get dressed in their fancy clothes and congratulate each other in their success in film that year. Not only that, it has been a hot boiling pot of political discussions, for a long time. People wearing clothes or accessories regarding political issues, the host telling jokes and giving monologues that include a plenty of political statements and sarcasms like that time when Jimmy Kimmel restated Donald Trump’s tweet calling out Get Out, one of the biggest movies of 2017, as “The best 2/3 of a movie”, in the 2018 Oscar. The winners or the candidates for the biggest awards including some sort of political issue in their speech, in arguably one of their finest achievements in life shows that just how politically active celebrities had become.
Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the best actors working today, finally received an Oscar for his role in the movie The Revenant, in 2016. In his speech he discussed one of the biggest political problems at that time, climate change, and motivated everyone to start taking actions. This sure was a pretty bold call to action that affected people’s tendency to treat nature humanely. DiCaprio could’ve talked about anything, but he chose climate change as the main talking point of his speech, believing that people will be with him on the issue.
Probably the biggest award out there, the Oscar has always been political. “An Oscar-winning formula has forever favored politics and popularity over quality” (Nicholsan). This claim appears to be true, because the Oscar have snubbed a lot of movies from winning Best Picture, the biggest award, including Citizen Kane, Goodfellas, and The Shawshank Redemption, just because they were not the ideal movie that they were looking for, they were movies were politically not suitable for that time.
The most recent Oscars, the 2018 Oscar, which was statistically the most diverse Oscar in years, was nothing short of political activism. Starting from the red carpet, celebrities wore an orange pin to fight against gun violence. Jimmy Kimmel addressed political issues including the Harvey Weinstein sexual scandal, equal pay and diversity in film, and #Metoo movement, a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault, just to name a few, in his opening monologue. Actor Lin Manuel Miranda talked about Puerto Rico and reminded everyone to keep Puerto Rico in their minds. ‘We grew up dreaming of one day working in the movies. Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood, and dreams are the foundation of America’ said the Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyong’o on the difficulty and hardship immigrants face every single day (Hamedy). To that actor Kumail Nanjiani, who shared the stage with Lupita Nyong’o, said ‘To all the Dreamers out there, we stand with you” (Hamedy).
Finally, the Oscar praised the bravery of the team that worked to craft the winner for best documentary Icarus, which exposed the true face of Vladimir Putin and how he pushed his athletes to take performance enhancing drugs (Hamedy). Celebrities are people, too. They care about the difficulties normal people are facing every single day and they are trying their best to do something about it. People should support them in any way shape or form, because an opinion or an action that came out from a large group will always have a potential to be solved.
Even though it was the most diverse Oscar ever, celebrities still had issues with it. People are often quick to find the flaws in things, because it is easier to do so rather than supporting the right thing. Change doesn’t happen overnight. These celebrities say that the awards aren’t diverse or equal enough and they try to push the awards to include more people of color or women. In today’s time, including more minorities and women seems ideal, but when there’s not a lot of people of color or women that make or take part in good movies, it is hard to nominate them as often as people want to. Celebrities want people of color to be represented and appreciated but forcing this change by doing so hasn’t worked out well for them.
Another reason why people think that celebrities should be active is because they are generous. They have donated millions of dollars to those in need, they have been named as a peacemaker, went to countries that were in dire condition and helped them to be more publicized. Celebrities are a major part of the worldwide peacemaking companies. They contribute to significant amount of money to help others. For example, “According to the Sunday Times Living List, the musician donated most of his money to fighting HIV/Aids. His own Elton John AIDS Foundation boasts 24 years of expertise in the fight against HIV”. Author J.K. Rowling dropped off the billionaire list for donating estimated $160 million dollars for charity (thisinsider.com).’
The opposing argument to celebrities effectively being political is that celebrities are acting political, but what they’re doing isn’t working out. It is true to some extent. As much as the political movements in entertainment are getting more active and people are getting more involved there are still some problems. These problems often are long-lasted (almost a tradition) and deeply complicated.
The first major problem is diversity in today’s entertainment. Celebrities way of fighting for diversity has been disappointing so far. Nowadays, celebrities have become so much invested in equal rights and equal opportunities, that they’re demanding everything to be as diverse as possible. Now, one might think it’s a good thing, but it has become a big issue. Let’s take a closer look at today’s film industry to gain insight into the problem. As the year goes on and more movies get released, the minorities, in this case everyone except white people, get frustrated that there aren’t a lot of movies featuring characters of color, directors of color, or even just a staff member of color. The issue is that the film industry has always been white dominant, ever since the start of films. Also, if we’re talking about Hollywood, which is located in the United States were the majority of the population is white, it should be obvious that white people will be in these movies a lot more than others. Over the years Hollywood have become more diverse, but what celebrities are demanding, to be as diverse as possible, can’t be achieved in a forceful manner. It needs a gradual and effective evolution.
The way of fighting for diversity in movies shouldn’t be forcing diversity. People can’t demand a movie to have a character of color just because they want minorities to be represented. What if the movie is set in a place where there are only white people? What if the actor pool for white people are much bigger and better than the minorities? As diversity in film got talked about a lot, people started to capitalize on it by making movies that include a lot of minority characters. Not a lot succeeded, but there were some successful ones. The most recent one was Black Panther. Black Panther was a giant hit in terms of everything. It almost had a full black cast including a black director, and it broke the stereotype that movies including minorities don’t make a lot of money, by making well over a billion dollars, receiving great reviews, and letting everyone knew that all minority cast can work. Good movies will bring in the attention and success. Celebrities need to understand this, and they should help minorities to make good movies. Good movies will bring in the people, people will bring in the money, and money will bring in more opportunities for minorities to be successful in film industry.
On the other hand, we have the studios and producers that are desperately trying to include people of color in their movies, as much as possible. Unfortunately, in doing so they forget about their main goal, entertaining the audience. They just shove in people of color in their cast or crew and call that a monumental achievement, but often times their movies are terrible. An excellent example would be A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Ava DuVernay, a black female. The movie was hailed as a monumental success in terms of diversity, because it included Michael Pena, Mindy Kaling, and Oprah Winfrey, just to name a few, all people of color. People got excited. In the end, the movie turned out to be horrible. It got 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, 4.2/10 on IMDB, and became a giant flop. The only reason for people to go see one’s movie shouldn’t be because it’s diverse, it should be good. These types of movies and diversity forcing are making it hard for celebrities to fight for diversity, because people just bring up the horrible movies and disregards their efforts.
Second issue equality in film and entertainment, generally. Filmography and entertainment had always put men before women. In today’s world equality is a big issue that has to be solved, and celebrities in the film industry are trying to solve it. Passengers, a movie that came out in 2016 saw Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt as the main casting duo. When it got clear that while Chris Pratt was being paid 12 million dollars, Jennifer Lawrence was being paid 20 million dollars. People claimed that as a victory for equal rights and was happy to see women finally getting paid well, but the problem is that Jennifer Lawrence only showed up in half of the movie, and Pratt was in the movie, from start to finish. People need to understand that equality isn’t achieved throughout this kind of behavior.
Actors or directors shouldn’t push the studios to be more diverse or equal. As seen above, this has proven to be not working. In order to make the questioners satisfied what they need to do is focus on making quality movies including minorities and women as a director or a part of the crew. Good movies will set up a great example of success, whether or not they like it or not more studios will start to include people of color in their project. The attention will always be there. A movie including a cast of color will always be on everyone’s radar. All the movies need to do is execute.
Recently we started to see a lot of celebrities pursuing careers as politicians. Using their fans and influence, a few have made it to politics, most notable one being the president of the United States, Donald Trump. People were divisive on the issue. Whilst a lot of people hated the idea of a celebrity becoming the president and saw that as a decline in American politics, you can’t deny the fact that the celebrities have become a major player in politics. The list doesn’t just end with Donald Trump. Famous actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor of California, from 2003 to 2011. The first thought a lot of people have when they see a celebrity becoming a politician is, do they know what they’re going to do it? Are they suitable for the job? These questions are right to be asked, because doubting the makes total sense. You can doubt them, but you can’t hate on them for doing so. What if they really do a great job? What if they are suitable?
The celebrities’ new interest in politics made people afraid that these celebrities are thinking of politics as a joke or just another step or change of direction in their life. This became even more of an issue when Donald Trump became the president of the United States. After the 2016 election a lot of celebrities have came out and said that they want to run for the office. Facebook owner, billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, Hollywood star Dwayne Johnson are one of the most notable ones. In an online article on the website Guardian the author wrote that “The inevitable failure of Trump presidency will once and for all cure people for the love of celebrity politicians.” Then she went on to say “He’s not failing the Republicans and the other alternatives seems even worse”. Celebrities becoming politicians have become an inevitable thing, nowadays. Society already accepted celebrities as politicians and they’re hoping that they can bring change. Let’s face it. Instead of disapproving and hating them people should be supportive and see the end result before they start talking.
