The ever-blurring boundaries between celebrity and politics
Politicians have for centuries borrowed techniques and tropes from performers and celebrated individuals in order to create their own public-facing characters.
Historically, some relied on props and rhetoric to win over the electorate in the UK; Benjamin Disraeli was known for his dandyish style, Winston Churchill for his radio addresses and iconic homburg hat, and Harold Wilson was often seen with a pipe in hand to appeal to the working classes, despite reportedly preferring cigars.
“An element of theatre and performance has always been essential in democratic politics,” said The Observer’s Will Hutton. And a “ceaseless struggle for media attention in our modern political environment” has more recently given rise to a breed of politicians who become celebrities in their own right, said Betto van Waarden, historian of media and politics at Lund University, Sweden, at The Conversation.
These politicians “style themselves as appealing public personae”, with frequent appearances and “proactive” media engagement. Think of the “charismatic” former US president Barack Obama or the “clownesque” Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who have both “converted the resulting media attention into political power”.
Under the spotlight
“Name recognition” and “celebrity offers a number of important advantages to aspiring politicians,” said Olga Khazan in The Atlantic, particularly among the American electorate. Most Americans, she said, consume more television than political news, “so they see more actors than they do legislators”, giving them a unique advantage over less politically engaged voters.
Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger are among the household names who ditched careers in showbusiness in favour of the political sphere. Reagan became the 40th US president in 1981, and famously later said: “there have been times in this office when I wondered if you could do the job if you hadn’t been an actor”.
Celebrities “can attract the necessary attention from the media” to win an election “without any prior political accomplishment”, said Professor Natasha Lindstaedt at the University of Essex, writing at The Conversation. The Apprentice star Donald Trump’s “antics earned him nearly $5bn (£4bn) worth of free airtime during the 2016” presidential campaign, giving “America’s most famous and colourful billionaire” a huge platform to reach voters, said the BBC.
Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/politics/957062/the-ever-blurring-boundaries-between-celebrity-and-politics