Celebrity, Pandemic, and Domesticity

In Presumed Intimacy, sociologist Chris Rojek writes that media audiences may have “para‐social” relationships with two media apparitions: statistical people and celebrities. By “para‐social” he means emotional connections to remote persons far beyond our kith and kin (1–10). A big disaster intensifies such connections with statistical victims and with celebrities as audiences look for meaning, direction, and emotional outlet. As the novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) infects every population, statistical people—once media's remote victims of disaster—are now us, comprising nearly eight billion and summarized in escalating numbers of the infected, the surviving, and the dead. As the COVID‐19 pandemic unfolds, celebrities on social media have status as arbiters of this crisis, but an intensified domesticity has transformed their roles.

Glimpses into celebrities’ private lives, including their habitations, are essential to feelings of intimacy and kinship with them. The crafting of these seemingly private realms—including access to them—is part and parcel of celebrity marketing. In a disaster where massive numbers of people, worldwide, are forced to stay indoors, this display of domesticity is riveting. As people meet online, newly revealing their own domestic spaces for work and play, celebrities’ domestic spaces are screen openings among many such openings. As celebrities are seen going about their daily lives, they perform among many ordinary performances and in relation to them. The contrast of their strange lives to the ordinary could never be more pronounced.

One of the more interesting transformations is the spectacle of action heroes—who would normally be racing to save the day—placidly reveling in domesticity. These include Arnold Schwarzenegger smoking a cigar in his hot tub and feeding carrots to his donkey and miniature horse at his kitchen table; Sam Neill petting a duck and bird‐calling; Patrick Stewart in an armchair reading Shakespeare's sonnets; and Samuel L. Jackson reading a children's book called Stay the F*ck at Home. Rob Halford, of the metal band Judas Priest, appears in a video spraying Clorox disinfectant on his clothing—including studded leather, spurs, and crops—while advising his metal audience to watch after their families. The masculinity portrayed in these videos takes pleasure in a benign, if attractively odd, domesticity while offering its authority to public service announcements well‐liked by statistical people. If celebrities are para‐kin, then these are the dotty uncles, part of—but not quite part of—ordinary family life. Whether statistical people respond to eccentric action‐hero messages to stay at home is as yet a matter of uncollected statistics.

During the pandemic, the domestic PSA has mostly replaced the type of celebrity aid enshrined in the 1985 Live Aid sing‐along of “Do They Know It's Christmas?” to benefit Ethiopian famine victims and Angelina Jolie's jetsetting to hotspots as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. These efforts emphasized global travel, empathetic physical contact, and communal gathering that is now anathema. Nevertheless, inspired by Italians singing on their balconies as COVID‐19 ravaged their population, Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot organized a video sing‐along of John Lennon's “Imagine,” with Zoe Kravitz, Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, Sia, Labrinth, Amy Adams, Mark Ruffalo, Natalie Portman, Sarah Silverman, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, and Norah Jones. Just as “Do They Know It's Christmas” offended Africans with its blinkered paternalism, “Imagine” sent many viewers over the edge with its smugness and disconnectedness from its statistical audience suffering from exponentially greater economic and physical risks. The video was “ratioed,” meaning that it received statistically far more dislikes than likes and far more negative comments. A common remark was on the irony of wealthy celebrities singing “imagine no possessions” while allowing flashing glimpses into gleaming palatial mansions with lush vegetation. They seemed as out of touch as the Eloi.

A backlash against celebrities on social media has ensued from this and other videos of celebrities doing what they usually do: performing wealth for their fans. Facing death and economic devastation, the statistical people are not in the mood to see Jennifer Lopez's family cavorting next to the pool while in self‐isolation. More than a few wags have compared the Lopez's mansion to the Parks’ estate in Bong Joon‐ho's brilliant Parasite, a biting critique of economic class which has the added edge of an infection metaphor. Nor are the statistical people in the mood to watch Kate Winslet advise her audience to wash their hands in a PSA written by Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns. Winslet wears a plain black sweatshirt and speaks in front of a common four‐panel white door and simple beige closet, stressing an ordinariness to her circumstances. In this instance, however, the illusion of authenticity exposes the inauthenticity of celebrity: Winslet is not an ordinary person but a Hollywood celebrity; Winslet is not an epidemiologist but has played one in a movie.

These displays led Amanda Hess, critic at large for the New York Times, to declare that “among the social impacts of the coronavirus is its swift dismantling of the cult of celebrity.” This is surely an overstatement, even for Hess herself, who ends with praise of Britney Spears: Spears posted Mimi Zhu's call on Instagram to “kiss and hold each other through the waves of the web” and “re‐distribute wealth.” Celebrity culture is not disappearing any time soon, but it is now most appreciated as a romanticized, benign, soothing domesticity. This domesticity must be eccentric enough to offset the potential arrogance, aloofness, and estrangement of wealth and cultural power. It must be Tom Hanks, the American Everyman playing the eccentric bodhisattva Mr. Rogers. Bridging the divide between global celebrity and statistical people, Hanks contracted COVID‐19 and survived in a global sigh of relief. The private lives of celebrities have taken on new meaning in the time of pandemic, as the streets empty, as the hospitals fill, as those who must work may dread leaving home, and as those at home may face their angels and their demons. The time of pandemic is no ordinary time for anyone.

Note

Thanks to my students in my Approaches to Popular Culture class for their discussions about celebrity and pandemics: Jacob Phillips, Aileen Dwyer, Fiona Graham, Emma Clemons, Kellie Rietsch, Valentine McWilliams, Chloe McCarthy, Celine Kerik, and Ivan Martinez‐Medina.