Cultural report: black lives matter and celebrity

This Cultural Report, part one of a double dossier, comprises three original short articles that critically examine some of the myriad ways that celebrity has inflected Black Lives Matter (BLM). BLM arose in 2013, when the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter trended on social media platforms in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal after he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. In 2014, spontaneous street protests followed the shocking police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. And by the end of 2020, upwards of 20 million had taken to US streets to protest the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. During this period, it has also manifested in various ways around the world. A decentralised movement that lays bare the structural racism at the heart of criminal justice systems, and protests police brutality, police militarisation, and racially motivated violence against People of Colour, BLM is the defining social movement of its era and one that requires sustained scholarly attention. Here, three outstanding scholars of media and cultural studies explore BLM’s relationship to issues of celebrity.

In the first article, ‘Black Celebrity Matters: On the Instability of Fame’, Brandy Monk-Payton interrogates the ‘matter of Black celebrity’, which, she writes, is ‘fundamentally rife with contradictions stemming from its originary paradox: how do those who were once considered slaves become stars?’. Exploring an ‘ongoing crisis of recognition for the Black subject’, where even the highest-profile Black celebrities are ‘alienated from a sense of national belonging’, Monk-Payton elaborates ‘how a kind of celebrity is perniciously made out of slain African Americans through the hyper-circulation of their name and image in the media for public consumption’, how ‘alternative modes of arts activism’ are enacted by ‘the Black Celebrity Creative Class to combat systemic racism in and around Hollywood’, and how ‘public disillusionment with increasing economic inequity and subsequent competing class interests put necessary pressure on the relationship between Black folks and their celebrities’.

In the second article, ‘Black Lives Matter 2014–2020: Celebrity Flashpoints and Iconic Images’, Hannah Hamad notes that while BLM ‘has given rise to the politicised celebrity status of heretofore relatively unknown individuals … it has also been punctuated by numerous celebrity flashpoints, and a range of interventions by extant celebrities whose public profiles have become inflected by their associations with, material support for, or vocal advocacy of the movement’. Hamad begins her analysis in the US, focusing on Beyoncé’s engagement with BLM, before extending it to the UK where myriad cultural responses to BLM served to highlight the structural racism at the heart of British life. In a wide-ranging discussion encompassing multiple arms of the UK culture industries – including film, television, and football- Hamad’s blistering conclusion is that ‘the entertainment media in 2020 capitalised on the cultural currency of Black Lives Matter because it served their interests to do so. And to whatever extent these responses were offered in good or righteously political faith, they remain, ultimately, in service to capitalism’.

In the third article, ‘The celebrity whitewashing of Black Lives Matter and social injustices’, Francesca Sobande ‘considers what the visibility of white celebrities’ comments and digital content amid discourse on BLM and related injustices in 2020 suggests about how the dominance of whiteness and celebrity culture contributes to the potential whitewashing of Black activist and social justice movements’. Sobande, thus, ‘examines some of the ways that white celebrities seem to take centre stage in media and pop culture commentaries on BLM and social injustices, and analyses what this suggests about the market logic that underlies celebrity and pop culture, and how white celebrities attempt to manage and market their self-brands’.

Black Lives Matter has attracted academic attention across a variety of fields. However, while celebrity’s role in BLM is a major fascination for news outlets and entertainment websites, academic work in this area tends to be focused on specific high-profile individuals, most obviously, Colin Kaepernick. It has also yet to receive adequate critical attention in this journal, notwithstanding a notable contribution by Duvall and Heckemeyer (2018), and a short piece by Howell and Parry-Giles (2015). Together, the articles in this dossier begin to fill this gap.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Neil Ewen

Neil Ewen is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Communications in the Department of English and Film at the University of Exeter, UK. He is editor of the Cultural Report section of Celebrity Studies journal, and co-editor of Capitalism, Crime and Media in the 21^st Century (2021) and First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics (2015).