Celebrities are being held accountable for what they said or did
LOS ANGELES: These past couple of weeks have shown the power — and the limitations — of social media. Specifically, the way collective sentiment online can push high-profile people to own up to hurtful or destructive words and actions.
The news cycle’s almost frantic pace has a weird and unsettling way of granting absolution before we even realise that’s what is actually happening, as countless other stories tumble down our timelines and grab our atention. Celebrities are counting on that.
Over the weekend, “The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison announced he would be “stepping aside for a period of time” from the show. His statement came ater an interview aired earlier in the week, in which he defended this season’s front-runner for attending an “Old South” — themed formal, an event steeped in the kind of antebellum tropes that are inextricably linked with the enslavement of Black people. A few days ater that interview, Harrison posted a statement to Instagram acknowledging that “by excusing historical racism, I defended it” and that by doing so, he “invoked the term ‘woke police,’ which is unacceptable. I’m ashamed over how uninformed I was.”
It was only in October that he was saying that “The Bachelor” franchise was making it their mission to become beter informed in the wake of the social injustice and racial equity protests of this past summer. “Does change ever come fast enough for those that want it and need it? No it doesn’t,” he told the digital publication Insider. com. “You can’t just flip a switch because when things have been going a certain direction for a long time, it takes awhile to turn around a big boat — and ‘ The Bachelor’ is a big boat.”
This kind of framing is a det way to sound focused on the need for change without publicly commiting to measurable goals, bench marks or timelines.
“I have spent the last few days listening to the pain my words caused,” Harrison wrote in his recent Instagram post, and it certainly sounds like the concern expressed on social media was intense enough that he (and ABC and Warner Bros, which produces the show) had to provide some kind of response.
But how meaningful is his vaguely-phrased “stepping aside,” anyway? I asked ABC to confirm whether or not Harrison is a producer for any of the shows in the franchise and did not get a response. The aforementioned Insider story reports that he is an executive producer on both “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorete,” and in television that title oten comes with points, which are a percentage of the revenue a show earns. Would his public apology have more or less impact if we had confirmation either way if there were also financial repercussions for defending racism?
These types of statements “oten feel very vague and safe, which is also why they’re so dissatisfying,” said Chris Stedman, who is author of “IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning and Belonging in Our Digital Lives.”
The Harrison Instagram post comes on the heels of a similar, if briefer, Instagram statement from Justin Timberlake. Celebrities may have upgraded beyond the notes app apology, but these statements retain that same nonspecific quality that makes them feel so empty. In Timberlake’s case, his intent was to “specifically apologise to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson” for the “times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what is right.”
Heaven help the digital archaeologist who unearths this post decades in the future, sans context, and wonders to what the singer could possibly be referring. That Timberlake let out important information might be the point.
A quick primer: His public treatment of Spears turned ugly when they broke up in 2002, goading press coverage that was primed to paint her in a negative light; she was the cheater, he was the angelic wronged party.
His apology to Jackson is reference to their haltime performance at the 2004 Super Bowl, when he grabbed her costume. In the atermath, Timberlake could not distance himself fast enough — from Jackson and the subsequent controversy — and it was her career that took the hit, while his own flourished and he became the darling of “Saturday Night Live” and was even asked back to perform at the Super Bowl in 2018.