Do you have an opinion on the state of contemporary ballet or keeping cats as pets? There are no right or wrong answers here, only differences of opinion. It is hard to imagine being upset by someone expressing an alternative view on either topic – unless, of course, they are a celebrity and you are on the internet.
The celebrity outrage cycle has never been especially edifying, but lately it has become faster paced and even more stupid. Let’s return to those questions. The actors Timothée Chalamet and Jessie Buckley landed themselves in hot water in the run-up to the Oscars: him for disparaging opera and ballet, her for disliking cats (and, more specifically, pressing her now-husband to get rid of his pair).
The backlash to both was so intense it seemed to jeopardise their shots at an Academy Award. Buckley backtracked, taking to a chatshow to clarify that she loved cats, actually: “Does the world think that I really don’t love cats? … It’s really weighed on me … I felt sick.” Having placated Big Cat, she was duly awarded best actress.
Chalamet, however, did not apologise or even acknowledge the widespread backlash provoked by his comments that “no one cares about” ballet and opera – and two months later, the discourse is still rolling on, with the actor Charlize Theron weighing in just this week (finally!).
If you can already feel your brain disintegrating like wet cake, I am afraid these controversies only get more inane. After mentioning he was no superfan of Taylor Swift, the Hunger Games actor Josh Hutcherson was flooded with online abuse, much focusing on his height. “‘He’s a monster! Destroy him! He’s short! He hates her because he’s short!’… That is why I don’t want to be online,” Hutcherson said this week.
Life is short, our time is finite, and the third world war may well be imminent; I do not wish to spend what remains of my attention span on these short-lived non-events, being forced to learn about how a celebrity has fallen short of our exacting standards and been Held To Account.
Of course there are structural underpinnings for this vacuous cycle. Between long promotional tours and the proliferation of podcasts and short-form video, celebrities are more exposed than ever, creating more opportunities for them to make off-the-cuff comments that they can then be called on to apologise for or qualify for weeks to come. These controversies also reliably get clicks, driving even “legacy publications” to pay attention. I am part of the problem, routinely writing about celebrity for this title; but in the past five years I have watched the bar for offence plummet and the depth of feeling intensify.
It speaks to increasingly entrenched online tribalism, where someone not liking cats or Taylor Swift is received as a direct attack on your identity as a cat-loving Swiftie. Algorithms rewarding the most extreme and emotive statements on an issue are further derailing the discourse.
I routinely find myself wondering: who cares? As a lifelong fan of pop culture, I truly believe that it can be approached intelligently, in a way that is revealing about us and the times we live in. But if there are opportunities to learn, understand or better ourselves buried within these sagas, they are being lost to the stridency of opinions and the speed with which they are inflamed then forgotten.
Perhaps these low-stakes controversies are a perverse means of self-soothing, a way of exerting agency and control in an increasingly unstable world. But our attention, time and energies are, indisputably, finite. Cathartic though it may be in the short term, no one benefits in the long run from creating new and trumped-up transgressions and attempting to extract apologies for the sake of it.
I refuse to accept that this cycle is a worthwhile use of our collective resources or the best discourse we can hope for. Celebrities can do their bit to change the culture by only apologising when actual harm has been done and audiences can endeavour to be normal about the standards to which we hold them. When a public figure falls short of the image you’ve constructed of them in your head, it is possible to simply shrug and scroll past. Sure, I didn’t love Buckley speaking so flippantly about getting her husband to give up his cats; but it would be disingenuous of me to respond as though she was trying to get me to get rid of mine.
