I’ve been looking forward to these class readings since
Professor Shirk mentioned that we’d be talking about Bono and celebrity
diplomacy at some point in the course. As mentioned in the Cooper and Dieter
& Kumar readings, celebrities often show up in my line of work, aid and
development. A coworker of mine has a famous (in his circle of friends) story
of Matt Dillon showing up at his office in South Sudan one day and my coworker
having no idea who he was for the first 20 minutes of the encounter. According
to Cooper, celebrity diplomats are likely here to stay. Celebrity diplomats/aid
workers/ambassadors/humanitarians seem to be popping up all over the place. My
question is the same as Dieter and Kumar: is this a good thing?
Dieter and Kumar hit the nail on the head early for me when
they talk about reality being more complex than the black/white, good/bad
narrative delivered by celebrity ambassadors to a media that seeks easy
answers. Aid is hard, development is hard. Responding to complex disasters is,
well, complex. It requires real professional skills to do well and requires
more than just running around saving babies. When you lose the nuance and
complexity of the work, the public thinks this are easy to fix and is outraged
when every Haitian isn’t in a well-organized camp 4 weeks after the earthquake.
(Aid workers were busy driving around Sean Penn, just sayin')
Dedication and commitment (Angelina, Bono, Clooney, Affleck)
don’t make expertise. It’s not professional snobbery to say that the work is
hard and complex and requires professional skills, it’s taking seriously work
that effects real people’s lives and wanting to do it as well as possible. To
have good intentions doesn’t make you qualified to do the work.
I think this gets to a deeper point about aid
work/development/international relations. The way we talk about the world and
global issues matters. It matters if we say that a whole continent is poor and
we could solve their issues quickly. It matters if we say that money can cure
everything and don’t talk about nuance of history and ethnicity and inequality
and gender roles. It makes it seem like the billions of people in the world
living in poverty are just too silly or backwards minded to do it themselves.
While there are many challenges with the celebrity
diplomat/humanitarian, I think there are opportunities to use them well. And I
say use them well intentionally. They have a place of power and a platform, and
they can allow this platform to be used by the voiceless. If a celebrity is
willing to come and see the suffering of others, to witness, listen, be humble
in their learning, and then share what they have seen, I don’t think that’s a
terrible idea. It’s human and can be good and gets a message out. But to say
that they are professionals or qualified to recommend aid policies when meeting
with heads of state is a bit of a stretch.
Hi Erica,
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points in your post about celebrities and the opportunities to use them. Bono is the best example here. U2 have so many fans all over the world, when they want to make aware of an issue, they can reach so many more people than other activist groups can. However, they definitely should not get in the way of aid workers, let alone have them drive them around a disaster area.
I agree with you that celebrities should not be called professionals and are not as qualified to recommend aid policies as professionals are. However, I think that Bono has been around long enough to learn a lot. He has been working with people like Jeffrey Sachs, for example, and people like Jeffrey Sachs can use Bono's celebrity status to have their voices heard. So even if Bono is not a professional, he can still make aid recommendations based on what people like Jeffrey Sachs have taught him.
Erica, I always love reading your posts. However, I have to admit that I have no idea who Matt Dillion is...before googling him.
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head when you reiterate that AID and development aren't just saving babies however every person needed to drive a celebrity around camp does take away from that baby saving.
While I agree that intentions and qualifications differentiate development works significantly I think there is a place for everything. It is a similar perspective to that of the abundant promotion of STEM education these days. How could we promote STEM education without the liberal arts educated communication experts pushing out the message. These two fields of study must work hand in hand and collaborate to achieve their greatest potential. So must celebrities that have the eyes of the world on them and the aid worker in a refugee camp invisible to average global citizen.
First, let's get this off the table. I meant to say Matt Damon!! No one knows who Matt Dillon is. Post-election I've been weirdly into watching a bunch of 80s and 90s coming of age movies, and he's an actor in The Outsiders, a movie I had watched before writing this blog.
DeleteI think the class this week really helped me distill my thinking. Celebrity diplomacy isn't intrinsically harmful. We get into troubled water when the media, decision makers, and others don't properly understand or define the role of the celebrity diplomat. To use your metaphor, a liberal arts educator shouldn't be defining the test questions on a physics placement exam. A physics expert should be doing that. Both are still needed, but impact is possible when role definition is clear and celebrities are living into the areas where they can really add value.