What IS the point of celebrities now our idols are heroes like Capt Tom?
IT FEELS like a moment from another age but it’s less than a month since Harry and Meghan started their new life in North America. A life that would be financially independent and free from the dull constraints of royalty now they could leverage the fame and influence that royalty bestowed on them. There would be endorsements and branding opportunities, paid-for speeches and voice-overs, TV production and publishing deals. Well. Talk about bad timing.
When Archewell was announced as their foundation’s new name, the only commentary was why anyone in these epically difficult times would be remotely interested in what they were choosing to call their charitable foundation.
The fleeing couple couldn’t possibly have known it was going to turn out like this – that the celebrity of the hour would be 99-year-old Captain Tom Moore, the war veteran who has raised more than £20million for the NHS by walking with a Zimmer frame around his garden.
They would have had no idea that the heroes of our time, the people who fill our thoughts and screens and newspaper pages, are the frontline workers battling this pandemic.
In only a few weeks the idea of celebrity, what it is worth and how it should be used, has been turned upside down and inside out and currently lies knocked out and splayed on the ground with nobody quite knowing what to do with it.
Covid-19 is so powerful that it is tearing up life as we have previously known it. It is everywhere around us, dominating everything – yet we can’t see it.
In contrast, celebrities thrive on the oxygen of visibility. There is no such thing as an invisible celebrity. Their power and influence exists only if they can be seen and heard and recognised. Celebrities, particularly those whose fame is built on the shaky construct of reality TV or social media, cannot afford to go dark for any meaningful length of time.
Which is why, to say the least, it’s a strange time to be a celebrity.
What are they meant to do? To be? Nobody has written the rule book of celebrity in the time of coronavirus but when they do they’re going to have no problem putting together the What Not To Do section.
Don’t, like US billionaire David Geffen, post a picture on your Instagram account on your £472 million yacht captioned: ‘Isolated in the Grenadines escaping the virus.’
Don’t, like Wonder Woman Gal Gadot, get together a group of your remarkably tuneless friends such as Will Ferrell, Amy Adams and Natalie Portman to sing John Lennon’s Imagine and then post the video with the ludicrously naive words: ‘You know these last few days have got me feeling a bit philosophical. You know this virus has infected the entire world.’
Well-meaning I don’t doubt, but embarrassingly vapid and pointless. Don’t, like Jennifer Lopez, post about the trials of isolation while showing pictures of your gigantic Miami compound.
And the list goes on.
One of the side effects of the virus is how acutely judgmental we have all become about each other’s actions and celebrity is certainly on the sharp end. Yet this is more complicated than just tone-deaf displays of narcissism.
It’s easy to criticise the way celebrities are engaging with us, accusing them of using the virus as a positioning opportunity to make themselves seem caring. And, certainly, there are some who deserve that criticism. Madonna posing in a bath covered with roses while suggesting that we’re all in this together is one such breathtaking own goal.
But, simultaneously, celebrity is a potent and powerful compound in all our existences. We enjoy it. And we don’t want our experiences to shrink to within our own four walls just because of the coronavirus.
In a world where there is so much pain, fear and uncertainty there is a place for the escapism, amusement and creativity that celebrities can offer if they get it right.
I won’t have been the only person looking forward to last night’s One World Together extravaganza organised from the US and featuring appearances by a huge number of brilliant talents such as Stevie Wonder, Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga and Lizzo. Great musicians and performers doing what they do best – raising fortunes and spirits.
Of course, the other factor that makes this virus so tricky for the famous to navigate is social media. In the past, they were able to limit their public exposure to ruthlessly stage-managed appearances, and the occasional glossy magazine spread where their homes and outfits could be carefully styled to give the correct message.
But now the public has come to expect a new degree of exposure. Instagram, in particular, has woven a sticky web where the famous find themselves trapped in the need to constantly reveal more of themselves and their lives to build their follower numbers.
They let us see them baking a cake with the children, taking a walk on the beach, waking up in bed sans make-up. Now, though, such trivia is being judged differently. What was once harmlessly intriguing can come across as irrelevant and insensitive.
As hundreds of thousands of people across the world die from Covid-19, it seems obscene that Justin Bieber might be paid more than £7,000 for every dance he posts on TikTok.
The politics of envy are often ignited in times of crisis when long- held grievances come bubbling up. Even in most of our own lives we are aware of the neighbourhood vigilantes peering through the curtains to see how often we make a trip to the shops.
Second-homers are vilified and rejected in rural areas where the permanent residents are scared they might bring sickness or use up precious resources.
And, across the world, particularly in poorer countries, this virus is thought of by millions as a contagion that the wealthy and privileged brought back home from their luxury travel abroad. The hashtag #Guillotine2020 has been launched as a
What was once harmlessly intriguing can come across as insensitive
21st Century tumbril where people can hurl abuse at those who have offended them.
Victims include American influencer Arielle Charnas, who alerted her 1.3 million followers that she had tested positive – and then posted images of herself fleeing to the Hamptons with her family and nanny, causing social media meltdown – and a loss of lucrative contracts.
Rita Ora has made the mistake of renting a house in the country with friends and posting images of herself in the sun with the hashtag #StayHome.
We want to be inside celebrities’ lives, but these days we’re often not happy with what we see when we get there.
So what should celebrities do? To just shut up is one option. Go to ground until this is all over – and just hope that you haven’t been forgotten.
One satisfactory solution is to give away some of your wealth. Rihanna has donated millions to US food banks and has so far resisted the temptation to go online and offer ‘be kind to yourself’ platitudes. Kylie Jenner has given over her cosmetic production to make hand sanitisers.
Alternatively, some will try to manage the choppy seas of keeping themselves healthy right in front of our eyeballs like, for example, the Beckhams. Victoria’s Instagram
video of the family cooking up ragu and banana bread was genuinely one of the most entertaining moments I have had in the privacy of my bedroom (sad, I know!).
Yes, they are lucky to have a vast kitchen, but why shouldn’t they. Victoria’s self-deprecating commentary as daughter Harper stirs the saucepan, admitting cooking ‘isn’t her thing’, and son Cruz’s glum face when he had to give his opinion on the results, were absolutely priceless.
Victoria’s video calls to encourage NHS teams also seemed welcome and genuine. Less successful was David’s paid-for promotion of an Adidas workout, featuring him and ‘my boy’ doing exercises to help us ‘stay fit from home’. As was his donation of his social channels to Unicef earlier in the week when all I could find was some charming shots of his own children – although that may just have been my own technical incompetence.
Still, at least they’re trying – and there is one consolation to the way Covid-19 has crashed the celebrity world.
At least when they get it horribly wrong, they give the nation something else to unite over rather than the scandal of missing PPE and the yearning for this all to be over.
Alexandra Shulman’s new book Clothes… And Other Things That Matter will be published by Cassell on April 23.