For the famous, a fine line between bullying, criticism
IN 2013, actress Jada Pinkett Smith wrote a long, widely circulated Facebook post that started with the question: “Are we bullying our young artistes?”
Smith explained she was troubled by hateful internet comments about A-listers such as Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Rihanna. “I was trying to differentiate cyber-bullying from how we attack and ridicule our young stars through media and social networks,” she wrote.
She raised a valid point, even before social media became the increasing nightmare that it is today. Celebrities remain as vulnerable as anyone to online harassment, including “Star Wars” actress Kelly Marie Tran, who faced abuse as the franchise’s fi rst woman of colour in a leading role, and “Saturday Night Live’s” Pete Davidson, who endured hate after his relationship with Ariana Grande.
Six years later, famous people continue to raise concerns about bullying — except sometimes, they co- opt the concept as a way to dismiss meaningful, legitimate criticism.
The topic crops up repeatedly on social media, and got a boost during the Kevin Hart controversy earlier this year. In January, Hart sat down for an interview on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, and discussed dropping out as Academy Awards host after he declined to apologise for homophobic jokes and tweets from years earlier that had resurfaced. Hart cast the outrage as a “malicious attack” on his character by “trolls.”
DeGeneres agreed. “There are so many haters out there,” she told him. “Whatever is going on in the internet, do not pay attention to them.”
The interview sparked backlash against DeGeneres for absolving Hart when many were offended by his comments, but some cheered him on. William Shatner tweeted, “I agree with what Ellen said. THEY win if you don’t do what your heart wants because of their bullying. Don’t let them dictate you & your life. Host the Oscars.”
By “their bullying,” Shatner was apparently referring to angry commenters. However, plenty of observers were troubled by Hart’s refusal to apologise for his past tweets, which included him saying that if he saw his son playing with a dollhouse, he would “break it over his head,” and a joke in his stand-up set about how one of his biggest fears was his son being gay. ( Hart said he has apologised multiple times, though there is little record of that.)
Discussing the Hart-DeGeneres interview on Twitter, writer Maria Tallarico tweeted, “Once celebrities fi gured out they could call any criticism of them ‘bullying’ the game changed.”
So how long can they get away with this strategy? Celebrities have always craved a scapegoat for negative publicity, such as blaming tabloids or paparazzi, but in an age when the culture is especially sensitive to bullying, blaming bullies is an effective tactic. In a cover story for Elle earlier this month, Taylor Swift wrote that she was the target of an “online hate campaign” in 2016, when Kim Kardashian West called her a “snake” on Twitter. “It would be nice if we could get an apology from people who bully us,” Swift wrote, without naming Kardashian.
On one hand, it makes sense that Swift would feel extremely hurt by the experience, and may want to use that feeling to relate to experiences her fans go through, such as getting picked on in school. But doesn’t bullying come down to a power imbalance? Isn’t Swift on the same playing field as Kardashian, and with her millions of loyal fans, certainly more powerful than any other commenter who joined in?
It can become surprisingly complicated. “If you’re in the position of Taylor Swift, and someone posts a snake emoji because you’re in a feud with a Kardashian, that might affect you seriously and deeply because artistes are naturally sensitive people,” Tallarico, a contributor to the website LaineyGossip, said in an interview. “But to turn around and co- opt it as, ‘Well, this is in the same vein as someone getting bullied at lunch in middle school,’ to me, I don’t see the correlation.”
While psychologists say there are subjective elements to bullying vs. criticism, bullying has three distinct components: The fi rst is an imbalance of power; the second is repetition; and the third hinges on intent, which can be difficult to defi ne.
“Intent can become the most murky, in that in all human interactions, we project on the other person what the intention is — and we can’t always tell what they mean, especially when we feel hurt,” said New York psychotherapist Dana Dorfman. Still, she added, “I do think that people overuse the term ‘bullying’ and have almost exploited the term in a lot of ways. Just because our feelings are hurt does not necessarily mean that you’ve been bullied.”
Howard Bragman, a longtime Hollywood publicist and founder of LaBrea.Media, theorised that some in the spotlight have latched on to the idea of bullying because it’s a “hot topic”: It’s an epidemic in schools and the workplace that has received a spike in attention in recent years, particularly because of the damaging effects of cyberbullying.
“Celebrities also say ‘ fake news’ a lot. They pick up what’s on the news, and they grab it and hold on to it as something to help defi ne a situation when it may not be accurate at all,” Bragman said.