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Abstract
In this article, I engage with humanitarian celebrity as a communicative structure that historically articulates various discourses of solidarity. Specifically, I approach this communicative structure as a theater of pity that, by circulating images and stories about suffering, proposes dispositions of emotion and action to the West. Whereas, I argue, the traditional critique of celebrity humanitarianism challenges celebrity as spectacle that produces inauthentic aspirational discourse, my analysis of two key “moments” of celebrity humanitarianism as theater—Hepburn's late-80s and Jolie's contemporary “moment”—demonstrates there is significant variation in celebrity claims to authenticity, each bearing distinct implications as to the dispositions of altruism it proposes to the West. Even though, compared to Hepburn's old-style “Good Samaritanism,” Jolie's generous entrepreneurialism steps up celebrity impact in relief and development donations, I contend that the contemporary, “confessional” discourse of humanitarian theatricality prioritizes the “authentic” emotions of the celebrity and our own connectivity towards her, thereby encouraging a narcissistic disposition of voyeuristic altruism rather than commitment to the humanitarian cause.
Notes
1. Robert M. Press, “A Visit of Compassion to Somalia: UNICEF's Audrey Hepburn Raises Public Awareness and Funds Worldwide,” Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 1992, http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/1005/05141.html/(page)/2.
2. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958; repr., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990) for the concept of the “politics of pity”; Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Politics, Morality and the Media (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) for the distinction between pity and justice; and Lilie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering (London: Sage, 2006) for a critique of the concept from a perspective of justice.
3. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
4. Craig Calhoun, “The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the Field of Humanitarian Action,” in Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, ed. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 73–97.
5. Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering.
6. Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (1986; repr., London: Routledge, 2004).
7. Press, “A Visit of Compassion to Somalia,” http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/1005/05141.html/(page)/2.
8. CNN, “World Attention Focused on Somalia's Young,” September 29, 1992, Audrey Hepburn: A Tribute to Her Humanitarian Work, http://www.ahepburn.com/interview3.html.
9. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “Angelina Jolie Named UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador for Refugees,” press release, August 23, 2001, http://www.unhcr.org/3b85044b10.html.
10. I draw on a definition of altruism as “a general disposition to regard the interests of others, merely as such, as making some claim on one and, in particular, as implying the possibility of limiting one's own project.” Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (1973; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 250. This definition couples the idea of altruism as a generalized concern for others with the potential for action: speaking out (though demonstrations or petitions) and paying (through donations) are, in this definition, regarded as interventions (or limitations) to one's own individual project in the interest of others.
11. Barry King, “Articulating Stardom,” in The Celebrity Culture Reader, ed. P. David Marshall (1985; repr., London: Sage, 2006), 246–7.
12. Mark Alleyne, “The United Nations’ Celebrity Diplomacy,” SAIS Review 25, no. 1 (2005): 175–87.
13. Calhoun, “The Imperative to Reduce Suffering.”
14. United Nations Press Release SG/SM/7595, “Secretary-General Extols Goodwill Ambassadors as ‘Defenders, Advocates’ of United Nations Principles,” October 23, 2000, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2000/20001023.sgsm7595.doc.html.
15. Williams, Problems of the Self, 225.
16. Anne Vestergaard, “Identity and Appeal in the Humanitarian Brand,” in Media, Organizations and Identity, ed. Lilie Chouliaraki and Mette Morsing (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 168–84.
17. Michael Marks and Zachary Fischer, “The King's New Bodies: Simulating Consent in the Age of Celebrity,” New Political Science 14, no. 3 (2002): 371–94.
18. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), 4.
19. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1992).
20. Jo Littler, “‘I Feel your Pain’: Cosmopolitan Charity and the Public Fashioning of Celebrity Soul,” Social Semiotics 18, no. 2 (2008): 237–51.
21. Riina Yrjölä, “The Invisible Violence of Celebrity Humanitarianism: Soft Images and Hard Words in the Making and Unmaking of Africa,” World Political Science Review 5, no. 1 (2009): Article 14, http://www.bepress.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/wpsr/vol5/iss1/art14.
22. Costas Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (London: Routledge, 2007).
23. Yrjölä, “The Invisible Violence,” 1. Although, the authenticity of celebrity has been studied extensively among media scholars; notably: Dyer, Heavenly Bodies; P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2001); and Andrew Tolson, ““Being Yourself”: The Pursuit of Authentic Celebrity,” Discourse Studies 3, no. 4 (2001): 443–57.
24. Alex de Waal, “The Humanitarian Carnival: A Celebrity Vogue,” World Affairs Journal, Fall 2008, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2008-Fall/full-DeWaal.html.
25. King, “Articulating Stardom,” 230–5; 244–6.
26. Rojek, Celebrity, 17.
27. Richard Dyer, Stars (1979; repr., London: British Film Institute, 1998), 4; Marshall, Celebrity and Power, xiii; and Rachel Moseley, Growing Up with Audrey Hepburn: Text, Audience, Resonance (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002).
28. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (London: Routledge 1993), 234.
29. Dyer, Stars.
30. King, “Articulating Stardom,” 245.
31. King, “Articulating Stardom,” 245.
32. John Durham Peters, “Witnessing,” Media, Culture and Society 23, no. 6 (2001): 707–23.
33. My discussion on Hepburn draws on three main sources: UNICEF's website and mission footage; television and press interviews, and the actress’s official biography. Alexander Walker, Audrey: Her Real Story (1994; repr., London: Penguin 2000). My discussion on Jolie—coverage on whom is significantly more extensive—focuses, similarly, on UNICEF's website, including mission footage and the actress’s diary notes; and selected interviews in global press and television networks.
34. For a theoretically informed account of Hepburn's celebrity as a discursive formation with a lasting and complex impact on female spectators’ subjectivity, see Moseley, Growing Up with Audrey Hepburn.
35. Moralization refers to the educative process by which a celebrity provides exemplary moral dispositions for publics to identify with, whereas ethicalization refers to the self-formative process by which a celebrity composes herself as a particular moral subject—thereby also becoming available as an exemplary public self in the process of moralization.
36. Audrey 1, “Audrey Hepburn's UNICEF Field Missions: Somalia, September 1992,” http://www.audrey1.org/biography/22/audrey-hepburns-unicef-field-missions.
37. Audrey 1, “Audrey Hepburn's UNICEF Field Missions: Somalia, September 1992,” http://www.audrey1.org/biography/22/audrey-hepburns-unicef-field-missions.
38. Audrey 1, “Audrey Hepburn Work for UNICEF,” http://www.audrey1.org/biography/21/audrey-hepburn-unicef-overview.
39. James Roberts, “Interview/Envoy for the Starving: Audrey Hepburn: James Roberts Meets the Actress Determined to Help Somalia's Children,” The Independent, October 4, 1992, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/interview--envoy-for-the-starving-audrey-hepburn-james-roberts-meets-the-actress-determined-to-help-somalias-children-1555466.html.
40. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), “Profile: Audrey Hepburn, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador,” n.d., scanned May 4, 2005, http://www.cf-hst.net/UNICEF-TEMP/Doc-Repository/doc/doc401478.PDF,2.
41. CBS, This Morning, “Audrey Hepburn Discusses Current Work with UNICEF,” June 3, 1991, Audrey Hepburn: A Tribute to Her Humanitarian Work, http://www.ahepburn.com/interview4.html.
42. Roberts, “Interview/Envoy for the Starving.”
43. Educational Broadcasting, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, “Audrey Hepburn, UNICEF Envoy to Somalia,” November 5, 1992, Audrey Hepburn: A Tribute to Her Humanitarian Work, http://www.ahepburn.com/interview5.html.
44. Peters, “Witnessing,” 26.
45. Educational Broadcasting, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, “Audrey Hepburn, UNICEF Envoy to Somalia.”
46. Lesley Garner, “Lesley Garner Meets the Legendary Actress as She Prepares for this Week's UNICEF Gala Performance,” The Sunday Telegraph, May 26, 1991, Audrey Hepburn: A Tribute to Her Humanitarian Work, http://www.ahepburn.com/article6.html.
47. Audrey 1, “Audrey Hepburn's UNICEF Field Missions: Ethiopia, March 1988,” http://www.audrey1.org/biography/22/audrey-hepburns-unicef-field-missions.
48. UNICEF coordinator of Goodwill Ambassadors, Christa Roth, “Audrey Hepburn's Work with UNICEF: An Advocate for Children,” Audrey Hepburn: A Tribute to Her Humanitarian Work, http://www.ahepburn.com/work10.html.
49. Matthew Miller, Dorothy Pomerantz, and Lacey Rose, ed., “Angelina Jolie Dethrones Oprah Winfrey to Top this Year's Celebrity 100,” Forbes.com, June 3, 2009, http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/03/forbes-100-celebrity-09-jolie-oprah-madonna_land.html.
50. For an account of Jolie's contradictory femininity as a film figure, see Kate Waites, “Babes in Boots: Hollywood's Oxymoronic Warrior Woman,” in Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young (London: Routledge, 2008), 204–20.
51. Littler, “‘I Feel Your Pain.’”
52. Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, “The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr Jeffery Sachs in Africa,” The Diary, episode 57, directed by Andrew Huang, aired September 14, 2005, http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/61385/diary-of-angelina-jolie-and-jeffery-sachs-part-2-of-6.jhtml (accessed October 24, 2011).
53. Sarah Sands, “We Need Angelina Jolie—She's the Antidote to Despair,” The Independent, November 18, 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-we-need-angelina-jolie-ndash-shes-the-antidote-to-despair-400797.html; and Mark Malloch Brown, “The 2006 Time 100: Angelina Jolie,” Time, May 8, 2006, http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1975813_1975847_1976577,00.html.
54. ABC News, “Jolie on Motherhood and Mental Health,” October 17, 2002, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124372&page=2.
55. Angelina Jolie, Notes From My Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Ecuador (New York: Pocket Books, 2003), Introduction.
56. Rich Cohen, “A Woman in Full,” Vanity Fair, July 2008, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/jolie200807.
57. Rich Cohen, “A Woman in Full,” Vanity Fair, July 2008, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/jolie200807.
58. The Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, New York, September 26–28, 2007.
59. ABC News, “Jolie on Motherhood and Mental Health.”
60. Lars-Olav Beier and Andreas Borcholte, “Spiegel Interview with Angelina Jolie: Acting and Politics Are Sometimes a Very Bad Combination,” Spiegel, June 28, 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,502444,00.html.
61. Luc Boltanski and Eva Chiapello, The Spirit of New Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2005).
62. Marks and Fischer, “The King's New Bodies,” 378.
63. Brown, “The 2006 Time 100.”
64. Boltanski and Chiapello, The Spirit of New Capitalism.
65. Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
66. Boltanski and Chiapello, The Spirit of New Capitalism, 42.
67. Kenneth Cmiel, “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999): 1231–50.
68. United Nations Press Release SG/SM/7595, “Secretary-General Extols Goodwill Ambassadors.”
69. Cmiel, “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States,” 1242.
70. Andrew Cooper, “Celebrity Diplomacy and the G8: Bono and Bob as Legitimate International Actors,” CIGI Working Paper 29 (Waterloo, Canada: The Centre for International Governance Innovation, September 2007).
71. Alex de Waal, “The Humanitarian Carnival”; and Heribert Dieter and Rajiv Kumar, “The Downside of Celebrity Diplomacy: The Neglected Complexity of Development,” Global Governance 14, no. 3 (2008): 259–64.
72. Boltanski and Chiapello, The Spirit of New Capitalism.
73. Williams, Problems of the Self.
74. Lilie Chouliaraki, “Post-humanitarianism: Humanitarian Communication beyond a Politics of Pity,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13, no. 2 (2010): 107–26.
75. See Marks and Fischer, “The King's New Bodies” for this use of “ceremonial.”
76. Qtd. in Barry King, “Stardom, Celebrity and the Para-confession,” Social Semiotics 18, no. 2 (2008): 116.
77. King, “Stardom”; and David Marshall, “Adam Smith and the Theatricality of Moral Sentiments,” Critical Inquiry 10, no. 4 (1984): 592–613.
78. King, “Stardom.” For case studies of the confessional in the realm of celebrity altruism, see: Eva Illuz, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) on Oprah Winfrey; Paul ‘t Hart and Karen Tindall “Leadership by the Famous: Celebrity as Political Capital,” in Dispersed Democratic Leadership: Origins, Dynamics, and Implications, ed. John Kane, Haig Patapan, and Paul ‘t Hart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 255–78 on Bob Geldof; and Littler, “‘I Feel your pain’” on Jolie.
79. Terry Eagleton, Trouble with Strangers: A Study on Ethics (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).
80. Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 185.
81. For an empirical study showing no evidence of the claim that engagement with celebrity may act as a lead-in to engagement with social issues, see Nick Couldry and Tim Markham, “Celebrity Culture and Public Connection: Bridge or Chasm,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 10, no. 4 (2007): 403–21. For the “intellectual vacuum” of the UN's celebrity-driven policy, referring to the lack of research-based evidence on the impact of celebrity humanitarianism on public opinion, see Alleyne, “The United Nations’ Celebrity Diplomacy.”
82. Dan McDougall, “Now Charity Staff Hit at Cult of Celebrity,” The Observer, November 26, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/nov/26/internationalaidanddevelopment.internationalnews.
83. Jaques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009), 8.
84. See Williams, Problems of the Self, for a discussion of a similar contrast in terms of the egoism–altruism distinction.
85. For the new role of celebrity advocacy in digital media, see A. Trevor Thrall, Jaime Lollio-Fakhreddine, Jon Berent, Lana Donnelly, Wes Herrin, Zachary Paquette, Rebecca Wengliski, and Amy Wyatt, “Star Power: Celebrity Advocacy and the Evolution of the Public Sphere,” The International Journal of Press/Politics 13, no. 4 (2010): 362–85.