The Chiseled Face of Relief

Who needs sympathy when you can have Fergie?

More and more, it seems that in order for a relief effort to work, the need for an important, significant cause is overshadowed by the need for a celebrity to make it hip. The lagging tsunami relief effort coordinated to help those in Japan, well below what other recent, and similarly tragic events such as hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti, raises the question of what drives us to give money to relief efforts? At the risk of sounding detached and cynical, although that’s one of my favorite risks, it’s clear that what drives us to philanthropy is not our inherent altruistic nature but instead our increasingly, and somewhat bizarre, obsession with celebrity.

The question is, though, is there anything necessarily wrong with that? and the simple answer is, no. Whatever works to inspire people to give to others and to help is a good thing. But its sad that there exists a flip side to that: without an effective “marketing” campaign, situations can be neglected and overlooked.

There is a great moment in the recent film Bruno, where the title character, played by Sascha Baron Cohen, goes to see two blond “specialist” in the field of choosing charities to support. While I am not entirely sure that such a field should, or even actually does, exist, the two women depicted in the film help advise celebrities which worldwide trauma, whether it be Darfur or Haiti, they should get their formidable name and chiseled features behind. This is not matchmaking made out of aligning two needs together, but instead it is matchmaking nurtures one narcissistic side of the equation, with the hope that the other side, the one desperately in more need, is helped as a result.

Associating “hipness” with charity is not a new thing. The original combatant in the war against pollution and littering is not Teddy Roosevelt, whose progressive reforms on factories and other excessive elements during the tail end of the great industrial period, but instead perhaps the tears of the crying Indian, the pop-culture hero from the 1970s ads. This sort of charitable commercialization, thus, is not just beginning. But it does seem as though we are in the eye of some sort of storm.

What happened with Katrina in New Orleans is almost as unthinkable today as it was nearly six years ago. The images we saw seemed impossible to be from one of our cities. New Orleans was decimated beyond comprehension, an American city that in its destruction seemed to not be from America at all, but instead from the Third World. Yet the images of desperate citizens looting while the national guard attempted to keep order on boats with shotguns, and Sean Penn, seemed essentially like a bad post-apocalyptic movie, one that wouldn’t be so strange for Sean Penn to star in himself, as the “fictionalized hero with personal problems.” This is the role he attempted to play in real life there, and the camera man he hired to document his role and release them to the papers was there to make sure everyone knew about it. And you know what, all jokes aside, this P.R. stunt may have helped actually keep the discourse regarding the horrific event relevent past the point where people tried to move past it as a means to rationalize it.

The other event that helped keep Katrina on the front pages was the infamous video of Kanye West, next to Mike Myers who looked as though he was watching a car accident happen right before his very eyes, claiming that “George Bush does not care about black people.” This was in interesting argument to make, and anywhere outside the politically correct confines of network television, one that surely merited a discussion. The race issue with Katrina was undeniable, and while it might not be as simplistic as West’s assertion, had he made a statement like that on cable, perhaps on Bill Maher’s show, he might have been lauded as an intellectual instead of dismissed as ignorant.

Yet, the moment created a TMZ style you-tube viral video, and this was exactly what America, especially its youth, needed to keep discussing an issue and perhaps, as a result, give more thought about giving aid themselves. If one thing has become clear during the digital revolution, it’s that a piece of controversial media, a video or a tweet, that goes viral and involves a celebrity is undoubtedly the most effective marketing campaign possible, whether it involves a tragic disaster or a new summer blockbuster movie.

The issue in New Orleans remains anything but resolved. A startlingly large portion of those displaced are unable to return to their homes. Many streets still look as though the storm hit just yesterday. Rebuilding the levee’s is taking on a glacial pace. In fact, if that same storm were to hit again today, there is a good chance that a similar flooding would occur. The only person who continues to fight and build houses for those in need is, you guessed it, another celebrity: Brad Pitt. His efforts, it seems, are not so narcissistic, and perhaps that’s his problem. If he were to generate more publicity, perhaps even a controversial PR mishap, people might get a better idea that disasters need more sustained effort than a week.

While there was no controversy needed to help market Wyclef Jean’s noble efforts in Haiti, his presence has pushed the needle, forcing Americans to recognize a disaster that was incredibly close to home and desperately required our attention. Jean is a master at self-promotion, and always has been, and he used these skills to create a fund that received money via texts and other digital promotional efforts. Just as George Clooney became the beautiful, speckled gray face of Darfur, Wyclef became the face of Haiti, and for Americans to process these issues, we need a face to go along with them. We simply process and digest harder to fathom issues if they go down smoothly with a nice pop-culture image alongside.

Recent word from Japan is that they are not accepting foreign aid. Perhaps this is a product of the infamous Japanese attachment to a form of long-lost civility, or they are just developed enough to truly not need help. In the first four days of those other crisis mentioned above, Haiti raised 150 million and Katrina raised 108 million, while Japan has raised a mere 23 million. I can only imagine the possible difference if Lady Gaga would just get behind the issue…