Rising star and musician Chappell Roan just released a string of poignant videos.
She detailed her distaste and anger towards fans as someone new to fame, and how it is severely impacting her state of mind. She refused to hide her disgust towards so-called supporters and how they have interacted with her since. She explained that accosting a stranger for a picture and getting angry when they decline is not normal. She detailed how herself and members of her family have been gravely affected by troubling stalking attempts, and again, reiterated how abnormal this behaviour is. The moral of the message was clear; it shouldn’t matter that this is a new standard of living she will have to get accustomed to as someone who rose steeply to fame in a startlingly short span of time- she’s still a human.
These sentiments aren’t new to the general public. Although people seemed to agree that her reaction was justifiable and needed to be addressed, a previously quiet minority grew louder in the background. Many claimed that her fame is her choice, or that when it comes to stardom you’re “either in or out,” as if this were a drug operation. The implications were that since this is all she has hoped for in terms of career success, and since she couldn’t have achieved it without her supporters, she shouldn’t complain.
It begs the rather bizarre question of whether addressing stalking concerns and abnormal, invasive behaviour, constitutes as unwarranted, snobbish, or even ungrateful. Most would sensibly argue that it doesn’t, but answers might change when the victim in question is acclaimed or well-known in some way. To a large number of the public, it is unfathomable to feel empathy or gain perspective for these prominent figures because the culture of fame and paparazzi has only existed to dehumanize the rich and famous, to create spectacles of them and to reinforce that they merely exist for our entertainment. When they upset us in any marginal sense, we remind them that they are disposable and cast them away.
It unveils a bigger issue that has been bubbling for a while, rising every now and then only to be quickly dismissed as mere anomalies. When stalkers become so emboldened that they kill, when fans fight tooth and nail to crowd and create overly crowded, unsafe gatherings at the slightest hint of a celebrity appearing at a location.
Many treat these instances as if the alarm bells should only be sounded when the potential danger a celebrity faces were to become imminent. Until then, they should practice unhealthy, obsessive vigilance and swallow paranoiac mental turmoil as a de facto part of an otherwise glamorous and highly coveted job. They must only express unadulterated gratitude, and should more or less relinquish much of their human rights and dignity for being daring enough to publicly share their art with the world.
These issues are seeing more prevalence because the internet has successfully blurred the lines between being famous in an unattainable and ambiguous sense, and being easily accessible, rid of mystery, and reachable. Highly prominent figures of the early 2000s and prior were synonymous with being untouchable, unavailable, and generally much harder to check in on at any given time. The idea of receiving constant updates and insights into the lives of the extremely prominent is still relatively new, so much so that even people with lower levels of fame struggle immensely with how to navigate these grounds. It heightens parasocial tendencies, encouraging fans and onlookers to act overly familiar with people they’ve never met, justifying it as a connection they believe to exist between them and the celebrity, or with brazen arrogance or envy.
People of older generations who are used to a different culture of fame and stardom have taken to calling youths in agreement with Roan, and the celebrity herself, “soft” and “weak,” for bringing awareness to this with the vehemence and urgency that she did. What these people may fail to realise is that being famous in today’s world is much more dangerous than it used to be. It is nothing like the air of mystique and illusion of privacy that was almost believable in the past, before the days of quick, easy, daily internet use and access, and ubiquitous social media use.
Before judging people we are quick to label ungrateful and unfit, why can’t we question our adherence to the status quo, especially in matters that barely concern or negatively impact us? Why can’t we incite new calls to action, new ways to challenge issues whose commonness we mistake for normalcy?
It’s easier to believe that celebrities are no longer human. That they have reached a standard of living that is incompatible with being carnal, error-prone, or mortal, and compatible with being unfeeling, cold-blooded and thick-skinned. While fame might do these things to a person, it does not remove the amygdala from the human brain, does not replace the human heart with robotic programming, and does not rob one of their perfectly normal need for boundaries. As social creatures, we assert boundaries for ourselves in our interpersonal relationships, no matter how connected we might feel to someone, or how much love we have for them. Being a celebrity is no different in that respect. It is more baffling- and certainly more dangerous- to expect someone with no relation to another, to callously denounce a need for boundaries for the sake of remaining relevant or keeping fans disillusioned and happy.
Nothing prepares people for fame, and even those who planned it, or have been in the limelight for years still express the ongoing ramifications it has on their psyche. Claiming that it is ‘soft’ to address what many have been apprehensive to say out loud perpetuates dangerous ideas about the importance of placing reasonable, hard boundaries. It only encourages people to take action when it might be too late, otherwise we are too weak, fragile and undeserving of being listened to or accounted for.
A generation is not soft because they ask for boundaries.