First published on 06.04.2011.
There is lot to catch up in the world of celebrity activism since late February. However one episode in the midst of the Libya crisis rises to the top of my list, a different type of intervention that helps tease out one of the major puzzles about the engagement by celebrities in world affairs. How does the profile and projection of celebrities from the world of entertainment differ or overlap with public intellectuals?
As I have noted in previous posts one of the fundamental shifts in celebrity activism has been on the level of intensity. As opposed to simply becoming the recognizable name and face spokespeople for particular causes, select celebrities have moved to the front lines. This trend stands out among the celebrities I have profiled up to now, namely Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Mia Farrow and Bono and Bob Geldof. But this approach is evident in a wider span ranging from Richard Gere to Bianca Jagger.
And exacerbating this transition is the new willingness of celebrities to make normative judgments about what side is right or wrong in conflicts. Attempts to name and shame have become an embedded tool in the repertoire of celebrity activism.
Bernard Henry Lévy in Benghazi with a representative of the Youth Defense Committee of the City. (photo credit: Marc Roussel)
Given this contextual change what is to be made of the story of a well-known French public intellectual, Bernard Henry Lévy (or BHL to audiences in France and beyond) conducting a secret mission for President Sarkzoy in order to make contact with Libyan rebels? One way of interpreting this mission is to view it as an updated version of a traditional variant of celebrity diplomacy, the mobilization by states of publicintellectuals for ‘ambassadorial’ roles going back to the 18th century with the appointment of Benjamin Franklin to represent the US at the court of France.
Yet another way of looking at the BHL narrative is to link it as a competitive dynamic between public intellectuals and celebrity activists. As Bono, Angelina and George Clooney have grabbed attention for the intensity of engagement on select global issues, public intellectuals have been relegated to an exaggerated image of armchair experts, with the added dilemma that a good number of these experts clearly got it wrong on big issues such as the support provided by many liberal as well as conservative public intellectuals for the 2003 Iraq invasion.
The BHL mission reveals that public intellectuals can get out of their armchairs and studies and operate on the front lines. Although a number of celebrity activists have made a massive impact by flirting with danger, including Princess Diana’s famous trip to the anti-personnel land mine fields of Angola, few narratives have the verve of BHL’s top- secret mission via a commandeered vegetable truck to go across the desert to rendezvous with the rebels fighting the Gaddafi regime (James Crabtree, ‘Philosophes sans frontieres as Plato battles Nato’, Financial Times, April 2/3, 2011). The big question that remains is whether this intervention will be a one off solo act or alternatively will it become a catalyst for copycat actions, with public intellectuals battling with their celebrity counterparts from the world of entertainment for space and credit on a diffuse issue – specific basis.
