The fault in our stars
From domestic abuse to sexual harassment: When it comes to celebrities accused of criminal acts, have we become too forgiving of their crimes for the sake of admiring their art?
But that’s fiction. That’s movies… I’m talking about reality. If you want a happy ending you should go see a Hollywood movie. — Woody Allen, Crimes and Misdemeanors
In his recent standup special, comedian Jerrod Carmichael talked about how we as a society tend to overlook sins and instead subscribe to the idea that “talent is more important than morality.” He mentioned how to this day we still listen to Michael Jackson regardless of the controversies that surrounded him. In a way, that’s proof enough that we hold Jackson’s contributions to music on a higher plane than we do his alleged crimes. Groan as we might, there is a lot of truth to what Carmichael said. We easily overlook the sins of others, especially celebrities.
When news broke a couple of years ago of Chris Brown assaulting Rihanna, I couldn’t have been faster to condemn the guy. All across social media, I bashed Brown and reminded everyone of how much of a dirtbag he was. I’d change the station every time I’d hear his music. I’d tell my friends to delete their files of With You and Forever. Try as I might, I would still hear his songs everywhere I went. I couldn’t understand why this guy was still getting airtime after such an atrocity. How could kids still listen to his songs given how he treated women? “His songs are catchy” is what usually passed for a reasonable excuse.
Around that time I was berating Chris Brown online, I started reading the books of Woody Allen. Without Feathers was a revelation to me. It was everything I wanted/needed from a funny book. From the deadpan humor to the comedic non-sequiturs, Woody Allen showed me how to write comedy. He also sort of became a style icon and made thick-framed glasses and cardigans almost as cool as a leather jacket. He became the perfect role model, one of the few celebrities I could actually look up to instead of the usual Hollywood actors. Woody Allen became a god to me. And then last year happened.
Accusations of Allen’s alleged sexual abuses came back into the public eye. More damning information and revelations surfaced from his alleged victim, with almost every news outlet condemning him. It was tough. There was even an article written by Esquire’s Stephen Marche that just broke me. Marche wrote how watching Woody Allen’s films again, one could easily find references to child molestation across his body of work, scattered everywhere from graffiti on the walls to throwaway lines of dialogue. One in particular that Marche notes comes from Manhattan, when Isaac, the character Allen played, talked about his new girlfriend. “I’m 42 and she’s 17. I’m older than her father. Do you believe that?” If that wasn’t concerning enough, another line — this time from Love and Death — had this, “I have lived many years and, after many trials and tribulations, I have come to the conclusion that the best thing is… blonde 12-year-old girls.” I admit I felt sick to my stomach reading the article and I almost promised myself to never support Allen and his work again.
Months passed and the sickness and anger I felt have subsided. I started reading Allen’s works again and I still can’t wait to see Magic in the Moonlight. What does that make me? A hypocrite at the very least. When I easily burned Chris Brown at the stake, why was it that I couldn’t do the same to Woody Allen? I hate that this was happening to me, that I couldn’t help but like Woody Allen after all the things said about him. I kept waiting for the good news that he’d be proven irrefutably innocent, but it never came. I wanted so bad to defend him but how could I support a potential criminal? On the other side of the coin, I didn’t have the heart to condemn the guy who inspired me so much creatively.
What happens then when the celebrities we love and admire get into scandals that reveal their darker sides? Should we still idolize them? Do we defend them regardless of the facts or condemn them and forget how much they’ve influenced us? What does it mean when the people we emulate actually turn out to be people we should despise? We can throw as many stones at random celebrities as we like, but when the fingers are suddenly pointed at those we actually admire, throwing stones isn’t as fun anymore.
It’s easy enough to think we know better, that when it all comes down to it, we’ll be able to determine what’s right from wrong. We may even think we can actually separate the art from the artist. But instances like this prove otherwise. Even when the scandals and allegations seem airtight, our love for these celebrities makes us almost blind to what’s right in front of us. Instead of siding with the victims, we often shame them further and side with our cultural “heroes.” There’s this almost automatic benefit of the doubt, a twisted bias, when it comes to celebrities who may or may not have committed wrong. In doing so, we become part of the problem and give even more influence and more power to our celebrities.
Even locally, when a woman comes out and says she’s been harassed by Celebrity A, or when a noontime host causes a ruckus at a club, there’s almost no contrition on the stars’ end because society forgives them almost immediately. It often takes just one PR segment on The Buzz, and the controversy is as good as gone. If we ever wonder why our stars continue to act like Real Housewives rejects, it’s because we let them. We give them free rein to do whatever they want. It’s downright embarrassing yet it keeps going. Instead of asking for more responsibility from those with influence, we allow them to use their popularity to get away with so much. They use their talents and their fame in order to whitewash their crimes. It only takes that one hit song, that one blockbuster movie, to make us forget all the things they ever did wrong.
We’d like to think that the truth is objective, what’s bad is bad and what’s good is good. But the harsh reality is that the truth has always been subjective. It never is just black and white, and we allow ourselves to shade it gray. It’s when the truth says something about us, when it reveals a reflection of ourselves we don’t want to see, that we subvert it. The celebrities we admire say a lot about who we are and how we want to be seen. When these people we admire do wrong, we fear how it will affect us. We feel betrayed by our idols, we feel betrayed by society for revealing these things to us. Because of this fear and betrayal, we’d rather believe and take comfort in false happy endings than bear the cross and consequences of the truth.
