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.