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DOES CELEBRITY ACTIVISM MATTER?
by Sarah Kendzior
Aljazeera.com
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128287385825560.html
Aug 29 2012
Qatar
Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD
from Washington University in St Louis.
In American society, awareness is action - but when attention is its
own goal, nothing else gets accomplished.
It was April 24, 2012, and Kim Kardashian was on a mission. "Let's
get this trending," she tweeted to over 14 million followers,
"#ArmenianGenocide!!!!!" Hundreds immediately retweeted her call to
commemorate the 1915 extermination of Armenians in Ottoman territories,
among them her brother Rob (over 3 million followers) and sisters
Khloe and Kourtney (over 7 million followers each).
Within hours, the Kardashians had succeeded. "Armenian genocide"
became one of the most searched for terms on Google and a top Twitter
trend. "Great! Recognition of the #ArmenianGenocide now trending
worldwide. Can't stop the truth. Join the movement!" tweeted Rob,
a former Dancing with the Stars contestant and aspiring sock designer.
"U can't know where your going until u recognize where you've been.
Help us recognize the Armenian Genocide April 24, 1915.
#ArmenianGenocide," added Kim, in a moment of sagacity more reminiscent
of her parody doppelganger KimKierkegaardashian than her own sexpot
persona.
#ArmenianGenocide was one of many massacres to trend in 2012 thanks to
celebrity association. In March, stars tweeted their newfound horror
of the war criminal Joseph Kony. "It is time to make him known,"
Justin Bieber proclaimed. "Im calling on ALL MY FANS, FRIENDS, and
FAMILY to come together and #STOPKONY. this is not a joke. this is
serious." Kony is still at large. In May, rapper Chris Bown discovered
that over one hundred people were massacred in Houla, Syria.
"#HoulaMassacre OMG!!!!! Not cool!" he tweeted, calling on "Team
Breezy", his fan base, to "raise awareness". His followers asked
Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears to help oust Assad. And Twitter
lit up like an Andy Warhol fever dream: slaughter and celebrity,
brutality and brevity, replicated in a systematic stream.
Celebrity campaigns have long been criticised for their fickleness and
superficiality. "Sustained awareness is what matters, awareness enough
to care, to do something," writes Jillian C York, a long-time advocate
for Syrian rights, of Brown's short-lived interest in the Arab world.
Ethan Zuckerman, a scholar at MIT, measures attention to causes in
units he dubs "Kardashians", named for "amount of global attention
Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day". He
notes that "at the peak of his infamy, Kony registers only 0.4 peak
Kardashians, a level she achieved by filing for divorce after a 72 day
marriage". Since the arrest of Kony2012 video creator Jason Russell,
interest in the arrest of Kony himself has plummeted.
In focus: Russia's Pussy Riot
But when one cause celèbre becomes passe, another arrives to take its
place, as the jam-packed Pussy Riot bandwagon recently demonstrated.
Hashtag campaigns like #FreePussyRiot or #Kony2012 have been
faulted for emphasising awareness over action or understanding. The
minimal effort required to participate in them has been derided as
"slacktivism", and their practitioners dismissed as thoughtless. But
there is logic to the slacktivist pursuit. The ceaseless push for
"awareness" - and the embrace of celebrities who can deliver it -
is a rational response to the attention economy, which, unlike the
real economy, shows no sign of weakness.
I want to Belieb
Awareness is supposed to lead people to take action. But in American
society, awareness is action. Entire careers are devised around making
people aware of a person's existence without that person doing anything
besides existing. The Kardashian family is sustained by tabloids
and reality TV, industries that thrived while nearly all other old
media failed. Publicity is chastised as crass - publicity mongers,
publicity whores - but it is arguably a more reliable investment than
education or attempting to ascend an unsteady corporate ladder. Fame
eliminates the barriers to success in a world of increasingly unequal
opportunity. Having achieved fame, one can then establish why one
merits it, which is why Kardashian business ventures derive from
their celebrity, and did not proceed or produce it.
Social media is not the only medium through which fame flows, but it
is the one most associated with equitability. In my former life as a
professor, I taught a course on the internet and society to students
in their teens and early twenties. Inevitably, the conversation would
turn to Justin Bieber. "But what about Justin Bieber?" the students
asked when we read a book bemoaning the devastating effect of the
internet on the music industry. "But what about Justin Bieber?" they
cried when we read critiques of social media hierarchies.
Justin Bieber had come from nothing and pulled himself up by YouTube,
the proverbial bootstrap of the digital age. No corporation assembled
Justin Bieber. He put himself out on the internet and his talent was
recognised. It is easy to see the allure of being a Belieber. The
internet gives the illusion of possibility to a generation that,
perhaps more than any in recent memory, has had their possibilities
stripped away.
In-depth coverage of campaign targeting Ugandan rebel
Justin Bieber is of course the exception to the rule - but because
those who make up "the rule" are anonymous failures, his ascendancy
is mistaken as representative. In an economy where Klout scores are
listed on resumes, the downtrodden are by definition invisible. At
the same time, social media allows a simulated intimacy between
celebrities and their followers, who settle for glory by proxy. It
is no surprise that Justin Bieber was one of the celebrities tapped
by the Kony2012 campaign, whose goal was to "make Kony famous",
because fame is thought to determine relevance, to create caring,
to force pragmatism from indifference.
Short memories
This pursuit of awareness for its own sake works well for the
establishment of personal celebrity, but it is deleterious when it
comes to the causes celebrities promote. When existence is mistaken
for action, then being aware of someone's existence feels like taking
action. When attention is its own goal, nothing else gets accomplished.
As celebrities embrace causes, the coverage of those causes reflects
celebrity values of self-promotion and spin. "I think those of us
working on these issues should make sure we raise concerns about
freedom of speech as a whole and avoid contributing to creating
'superstars' that may attract a lot of (short-term) empathy but maybe
no real questioning of repressive patterns and the need to fight them,"
argues Leila Nachawati, a Syrian-Spanish blogger and activist.
Pussy Riot, the Russian dissidents who inspired the creation of
balaclavas in "slimming black", is a recent case in point. The Syrian
fighter as sex symbol meme is another. Having trended, they become
trends, divorced from the conditions that produced them, isolated
from the anonymous activists fighting the same fight.
Perhaps that's why celebrity activism seems least damaging when the
damage has already been done. The Kardashians' attempt to publicise
a genocide - whether on Twitter or through a Very Special Episode of
Khloe and Lamar - stands in sharp juxtaposition with Kim's usual tweets
on eye liner and jeggings, but it spurred millions to contemplate
tragedy. In their ceaseless bid for our attention, the Kardashians
shifted it elsewhere. It is hard to fault the pursuit of awareness
when it creates fame for the forgotten.
Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD
from Washington University in St Louis.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
by Sarah Kendzior
Aljazeera.com
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128287385825560.html
Aug 29 2012
Qatar
Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD
from Washington University in St Louis.
In American society, awareness is action - but when attention is its
own goal, nothing else gets accomplished.
It was April 24, 2012, and Kim Kardashian was on a mission. "Let's
get this trending," she tweeted to over 14 million followers,
"#ArmenianGenocide!!!!!" Hundreds immediately retweeted her call to
commemorate the 1915 extermination of Armenians in Ottoman territories,
among them her brother Rob (over 3 million followers) and sisters
Khloe and Kourtney (over 7 million followers each).
Within hours, the Kardashians had succeeded. "Armenian genocide"
became one of the most searched for terms on Google and a top Twitter
trend. "Great! Recognition of the #ArmenianGenocide now trending
worldwide. Can't stop the truth. Join the movement!" tweeted Rob,
a former Dancing with the Stars contestant and aspiring sock designer.
"U can't know where your going until u recognize where you've been.
Help us recognize the Armenian Genocide April 24, 1915.
#ArmenianGenocide," added Kim, in a moment of sagacity more reminiscent
of her parody doppelganger KimKierkegaardashian than her own sexpot
persona.
#ArmenianGenocide was one of many massacres to trend in 2012 thanks to
celebrity association. In March, stars tweeted their newfound horror
of the war criminal Joseph Kony. "It is time to make him known,"
Justin Bieber proclaimed. "Im calling on ALL MY FANS, FRIENDS, and
FAMILY to come together and #STOPKONY. this is not a joke. this is
serious." Kony is still at large. In May, rapper Chris Bown discovered
that over one hundred people were massacred in Houla, Syria.
"#HoulaMassacre OMG!!!!! Not cool!" he tweeted, calling on "Team
Breezy", his fan base, to "raise awareness". His followers asked
Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears to help oust Assad. And Twitter
lit up like an Andy Warhol fever dream: slaughter and celebrity,
brutality and brevity, replicated in a systematic stream.
Celebrity campaigns have long been criticised for their fickleness and
superficiality. "Sustained awareness is what matters, awareness enough
to care, to do something," writes Jillian C York, a long-time advocate
for Syrian rights, of Brown's short-lived interest in the Arab world.
Ethan Zuckerman, a scholar at MIT, measures attention to causes in
units he dubs "Kardashians", named for "amount of global attention
Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day". He
notes that "at the peak of his infamy, Kony registers only 0.4 peak
Kardashians, a level she achieved by filing for divorce after a 72 day
marriage". Since the arrest of Kony2012 video creator Jason Russell,
interest in the arrest of Kony himself has plummeted.
In focus: Russia's Pussy Riot
But when one cause celèbre becomes passe, another arrives to take its
place, as the jam-packed Pussy Riot bandwagon recently demonstrated.
Hashtag campaigns like #FreePussyRiot or #Kony2012 have been
faulted for emphasising awareness over action or understanding. The
minimal effort required to participate in them has been derided as
"slacktivism", and their practitioners dismissed as thoughtless. But
there is logic to the slacktivist pursuit. The ceaseless push for
"awareness" - and the embrace of celebrities who can deliver it -
is a rational response to the attention economy, which, unlike the
real economy, shows no sign of weakness.
I want to Belieb
Awareness is supposed to lead people to take action. But in American
society, awareness is action. Entire careers are devised around making
people aware of a person's existence without that person doing anything
besides existing. The Kardashian family is sustained by tabloids
and reality TV, industries that thrived while nearly all other old
media failed. Publicity is chastised as crass - publicity mongers,
publicity whores - but it is arguably a more reliable investment than
education or attempting to ascend an unsteady corporate ladder. Fame
eliminates the barriers to success in a world of increasingly unequal
opportunity. Having achieved fame, one can then establish why one
merits it, which is why Kardashian business ventures derive from
their celebrity, and did not proceed or produce it.
Social media is not the only medium through which fame flows, but it
is the one most associated with equitability. In my former life as a
professor, I taught a course on the internet and society to students
in their teens and early twenties. Inevitably, the conversation would
turn to Justin Bieber. "But what about Justin Bieber?" the students
asked when we read a book bemoaning the devastating effect of the
internet on the music industry. "But what about Justin Bieber?" they
cried when we read critiques of social media hierarchies.
Justin Bieber had come from nothing and pulled himself up by YouTube,
the proverbial bootstrap of the digital age. No corporation assembled
Justin Bieber. He put himself out on the internet and his talent was
recognised. It is easy to see the allure of being a Belieber. The
internet gives the illusion of possibility to a generation that,
perhaps more than any in recent memory, has had their possibilities
stripped away.
In-depth coverage of campaign targeting Ugandan rebel
Justin Bieber is of course the exception to the rule - but because
those who make up "the rule" are anonymous failures, his ascendancy
is mistaken as representative. In an economy where Klout scores are
listed on resumes, the downtrodden are by definition invisible. At
the same time, social media allows a simulated intimacy between
celebrities and their followers, who settle for glory by proxy. It
is no surprise that Justin Bieber was one of the celebrities tapped
by the Kony2012 campaign, whose goal was to "make Kony famous",
because fame is thought to determine relevance, to create caring,
to force pragmatism from indifference.
Short memories
This pursuit of awareness for its own sake works well for the
establishment of personal celebrity, but it is deleterious when it
comes to the causes celebrities promote. When existence is mistaken
for action, then being aware of someone's existence feels like taking
action. When attention is its own goal, nothing else gets accomplished.
As celebrities embrace causes, the coverage of those causes reflects
celebrity values of self-promotion and spin. "I think those of us
working on these issues should make sure we raise concerns about
freedom of speech as a whole and avoid contributing to creating
'superstars' that may attract a lot of (short-term) empathy but maybe
no real questioning of repressive patterns and the need to fight them,"
argues Leila Nachawati, a Syrian-Spanish blogger and activist.
Pussy Riot, the Russian dissidents who inspired the creation of
balaclavas in "slimming black", is a recent case in point. The Syrian
fighter as sex symbol meme is another. Having trended, they become
trends, divorced from the conditions that produced them, isolated
from the anonymous activists fighting the same fight.
Perhaps that's why celebrity activism seems least damaging when the
damage has already been done. The Kardashians' attempt to publicise
a genocide - whether on Twitter or through a Very Special Episode of
Khloe and Lamar - stands in sharp juxtaposition with Kim's usual tweets
on eye liner and jeggings, but it spurred millions to contemplate
tragedy. In their ceaseless bid for our attention, the Kardashians
shifted it elsewhere. It is hard to fault the pursuit of awareness
when it creates fame for the forgotten.
Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD
from Washington University in St Louis.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.