THE VOICE OF POP ICONS
After the Manchester attacks last week at the end of the Ariana Grande concert, where a suicide bombing killed 22 people and injured 120 at Manchester Arena, the singer almost immediately flew home to the States. She tweeted, “broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.” Her simple statement has been retweeted 1.1 million times and liked 2.7 million times. As images and stories of this horrific incident took over our newsfeeds, we ourselves were trying to come to terms with what all this meant. As spectators across the world we were distributed. For some reason one story that’s received more attention than it deserved was when Piers Morgan insensitively decided to blast Ariana Grande on Twitter. The Good
Morning Britain host and the “I want to be the most infuriating, irritating, ignorant, imbecilic, idiotic, hated person in the world” nominee (the list of nominees is compiled by yours truly if you were interested to know) re-tweeted a story about the Queen visiting some of the injured and recovering victims in the hospital. “Might have been nice if @ArianaGrande had stayed to do the same.”
After mercilessly being attacked on Twitter for his comments (rightly so) he clarified (we wish he hadn’t) “I expected her to stay, visit & comfort her wounded fans & relatives of those who died.” I found the use of the word ‘expected’, very interesting here. Ariana hasn’t responded and I hope that she won’t lower herself by doing so. Piers’ lame and desperate attempts to stay relevant, brought up a bigger issue. What should we expect from celebrities and pop stars when it comes to tragic, politically or religiously motivated acts of violence?
Celebrity and politics have always found themselves at blows with one another from Jane Fonda, Muhammad Ali, Matt Damon, George Clooney, and last year during the US presidential race, Katy Perry, Ellen Degeneres and even Robert de Niro had something to say about politics.
Should we be expecting our celebrities to also be acting as vessels of social and political stability during times of turmoil? We expect to see royalty and politicians visiting hospitals in the aftermath of an event like this. For some reason, it gives the general masses a sense of stability or closure. But should we expect this from Ariana, Taylor, Justin? Piers’ ignorant comments made it seem, that despite being traumatised along with 21,000 other people, this was Ariana’s duty. For some reason to someone like Piers, the fact that Ariana has offered to pay for the funeral expenses of all the victims and that she’s planning to headline a star-studded fundraising concert on June 4 doesn’t count.
I don’t really have an answer to this. I do have an opinion though. I think it’s really up to the celebrity in question. If Ariana had gone to the hospital to visit the injured victims it would have been touching and poignant. The fact that she hasn’t, doesn’t take away from her humanity at all.