NEW POLITICS OF CELEBRITY
Public using social media to vet stars with scrutiny once reserved for candidates seeking public office
There’s the work and there’s the person. From a business standpoint, both of those things matter greatly.
Donald Trump took the stage in New York in the early hours of Nov. 9 to thank America for electing him president. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in California was Billy Bush, unemployed. In 2016, a celebrity lost his job after participating in a more than decade-old crude conversation, and another became the leader of the free world in spite of it.
The public is now vetting celebrities at star-making moments in ways once reserved for people running for office. In recent years, they’ve dug up old tweets, revisited court cases and lawsuits, and uncovered unsettling details, prompting debates about the ethics of supporting an entertainer’s work.
“It’s almost like, ‘Welcome to politics,’ ” said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP strategist behind some of the most infamous TV campaign ads. Past misdeeds damaging present careers is “the kind of thing in political life that we expected for years.”
In the world of entertainment, these controversies can be as serious as criminal rape charges or as banal as distasteful jokes — and get extra attention amid increased conversations about race, gender and sexual assault.
In Nate Parker’s case, his directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation earned serious Oscar buzz in early 2016 and a Sundance-record deal with Fox Searchlight. But as the PR campaign for the film mounted, the media took a closer look at Parker’s 1999 rape case. Parker, then a college student, was acquitted and has since maintained the act was consensual. But the public scrutiny increased when reporters discovered new details, including his accuser’s 2012 suicide.
“It becomes that question: Do you judge an artist’s work based on just their work, or other things?” said Dan Berger, president of the independent film company Oscilloscope. “There’s the work and there’s the person. From a business standpoint, both of those things matter greatly.”
Those who are “making and putting films out into the world are speaking to a more vocal and more active group of people” than in the past, he said.
The Internet has made it easier than ever to become a sleuth, and social media provide a megaphone for anyone to create a firestorm.
Twitter provides a digital record of past statements. In 2015, Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah would take over The Daily Show — and less than 24 hours later, the comedian came under fire for jokes he tweeted in 2009 about women and Jews.
“Society, especially the last few years, has begged for heroes — and it revels in destroying people,” said former GOP representative Trey Radel, who resigned from Congress in 2014 after pleading guilty to a cocaine drug charge. He has since started a media firm offering crisis management services and written a book about how Washington functions.
Seven years ago, the entertainment press covered sexual harassment lawsuits filed against Casey Affleck by two women involved in the production of a 2010 project. Affleck denied the claims, which included allegations of lewd comments and “aggressive” behaviour, and threatened to countersue. The parties settled out of court.
But by 2016, Affleck’s Manchester by the Sea performance was getting Oscar buzz, prompting a renewed interest in the legal battle. Some journalists and others, such as actress Constance Wu, argued that Hollywood shouldn’t anoint him with an Academy Award.
It’s unclear how Affleck’s career will be affected. He’s already won a Golden Globe and is a favourite to win the best actor Oscar on Feb. 26.
Mel Gibson spent 10 years iced out of the movie business after his comments about Jews during a DUI arrest went public. The academy faced criticism in 2003 for awarding an Oscar to director Roman Polanski, who decades earlier pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl and fled the country shortly before sentencing.
Then there was Frank Sinatra, “the pioneer of celebrity scandal,” noted James Kaplan , who wrote Sinatra: The Chairman. As “an old lefty” and unabashed FDR Democrat, “he was the adored punching bag of every conservative columnist in America” who served as “the equivalent of the Internet then.” Critics boycotted his music and movies.
Sinatra did himself no favours by going to Cuba, mingling with mobsters, having affairs and drunkenly punching people in public. His record label dropped him in 1952, and he seemed headed for oblivion. But he experienced a comeback during the mid to late 1950s.
The vetting of off-camera words and deeds reflects how much of public life has become politicized during the 2016 election season and aftermath. Liberals and conservatives have mounted boycotts over cereal, coffee shops and clothing lines over the companies’ perceived political alignments. Performing at an inauguration, once viewed as a banal honour, became a fraught gig in 2017.
And while such liberals are shut out of the White House, they still have power in Hollywood, where their social mores around race, gender and sexuality matter.
“We can boycott a movie, but we can’t boycott the secretary of the interior,” Berger observed. “I don’t want to say we’re harder on an actor who’s done something horrible than a politician who is horrible. We just can’t express ourselves the same way, as immediately.”