Celebrities and the Coronavirus
With an ongoing world pandemic, quarantine is proving to be very difficult for everyone. People have lost their jobs. Nobody is allowed to travel out of fear of contracting the disease. There is a lot of panic-buying as everyone needs enough food, water, and other essentials to last at least an entire week. While everybody deals with isolation in different ways, there is one particular group of people that seem to be taking it the hardest: celebrities.
Hold on a minute…celebrities?! Celebrities who live in their steel-gated, heavily guarded, billion-dollar mansions with swimming pools, a tennis court, walk-in wardrobes, home theatres where they can watch themselves in movies, luxury kitchens that can fit at least 1 or 2 chefs, and king-sized canopy beds that have at least a portion of their earnings stuffed underneath the mattress?! Super-expensive celebs that don’t have to work another day in their life?! Holier-than-thou Hollywood stars who have personal assistants do things like their laundry, cooking their food, and buying their groceries for them but with lower pay?! Multi-millionaires who wouldn’t give homeless people a second glance as they pass them in their fancy limos?! Something is seriously wrong here…
At first, this may seem like proof that all the material goods in the world can’t buy happiness. That is understandable, but at some point you have got to suck it up and move on with your life, count your blessings. The entire Hollywood clan does not seem to realize how lucky they are. Can afford all the riches they want and they still complain, global crisis taking place or not. If there has been one thing people have learned from this pandemic, it is how little celebrities contribute to society. What do they do again? Pretend to be someone else, sing lyrics they don’t even come up with? The real heroes are doctors, nurses, paramedics, grocery store clerks, and firefighters, they are doing everything they can to ensure that everyone makes it out of this safe and healthy. Yet the stars of Tinseltown still find a way to make everything about themselves, posting social media videos of themselves bemoaning how bored they are or doing mundane, normal people stuff. Shocker.
As if making sure they get seen by the masses wasn’t bad enough, it’s even more jarring when they claim how much they “care.” Case in point, Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot’s Imagine compilation, where the star initiated an Instagram video compilation of herself and others singing the John Lennon hit. The video itself comes off as forced and pretentious, as all the celebrities involved are singing this from the comfort of their own mansions. How can they actually make anyone feel better when all they are doing is just recording themselves sitting on their thrones? Not only that, Mr. Lennon, the OG hit maker, had a deeply troubled private life, having been a confirmed domestic and child abuser. Seeing something like this only adds more insult to injury, as these stars basically have everything handed over to them on a gilded plate, while in the real world, there are people who don’t have the second option of working from home who have lost their minimum wage jobs and have no other means of income (Posyton, 2020). At this point, the entirety of Hollywood just needs to learn when to shut up.
Something that is even worse than seeing one or even more of the elite trying hard to show that they care? Showing that they do not care at all. Take former High School Musical Star Vanessa Hudgens, who made a rather callous remark about COVID-19 during an Instagram Live who half-heartedly acknowledged that people were going to die. Not only does Ms. Hudgens come across as incredibly inconsiderate, but also inarticulate, as she seems to punctuate every one of her words with “like” (Wallis, 2020). At this point, it is most definitely not right to say something like this, celebrity or not. But in Ms. Hudgens’ case, it was out in the open for everyone to see, which makes it particularly egregious. How would she feel if this all came back to bite her? Or if someone said this to her if she had a loved one who had tested positive for the disease? Fame has clearly gotten to her head if she had the gall to make that kind of comment.
In a nutshell, celebrities have given us even more of a reason to pay less attention to them during these trying times. You would think they would be taken down a peg or two during a time like this but clearly not, they will always find a way to make the media pay attention to them. This is not to say that Hollywood stars don’t have loved ones they genuinely care about but there are way too many people that have died from or lost family and friends to this virus and they have some seriously skewed priorities if they are still hungry for attention. And if they did have a loved one who has fallen sick from COVID-19, they would have way more important things to worry about than getting column inches for not wearing makeup, going to the grocery store, and what kind of shampoo they use. Anyway, this just makes me glad I am not a celebrity. As much as I want the money and glamour, I am more than content in my computer job and with actually being completely in touch with reality.
References:
Internet responds to Gal Gadot and other stars’ cover of John Lennon song “Imagine.” Retrieved from
https://www.dailytargum.com/article/2020/03/imagine-cover-gal-gadot
Vanessa Hudgens under fire for dismissive Coronavirus remarks. Retrieved from
https://globalnews.ca/news/6691201/coronavirus-vanessa-hudgens-under-fire/
