Celebrities at UN – The Exploitation of Celebrities By The Humanitarian Organization

This week gave us three brilliant speeches.

Sometimes celebrities are doing the job they are employed to, which is acting as spokesperson and role models. According to Richard Dyer, the bible of celebrity studies, the celebrity persona is not confined to her professional image but consists of everything publicly available about her. .

Of course, celebrities are today the perfect tool for those organizations to gain visibility toward a wider audience.

Four reasons, among others, contribute to explain the increased exploitation of celebrities by the humanitarian organization :

1. Reinforcing the message persuasion and mobilization capacities.

Celebrities are placed at the intersection between the media and the public at large and have the capacity to attract the former and reach the latter with messages about which issues people should feel concerned about and why.

2. Making that kind of message more “sexy‟ in the eye of mass media.

3. Attract public’s attention.

Celebrities represent a mediation point able to reconcile their divergent objectives and practices analyzed above.

4. Being a vector whose utilization can be more directly managed by the organizations.

It facilitates a better control of its exploitation that is not limited to the management of their media exposure.

Those days, it seems that celebrities are all focusing on their public humanitarian appearance (see the huge success of the ALS Ice Bucket challenge that went hugely viral among the celebrity society during this summer). Remember how celebrities let good causes borrow their fame all the way from Liveaid to Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys lending their names to Oxfam and that regiment of United Nations humanitarian initiatives?

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Emma Watson, Victoria Beckham and Leonardo Dicaprio

This week ,Emma Watson, Victoria Beckham and Leonardo Dicaprio prove to us all that they’re not just dumb celebrity and that they can be as good in addressing strong issues such as gender equality and environment as they are brilliant in their profession (actress, actor or fashion designer).

- Emma Watson Deliver a Game-Changing Speech on Feminism for the U.N.

“Men, gender equality is your issue too”

Source : Vanity Fair.com

- Leonardo DiCaprio’s Speech at the United Nations Climate Summit

“None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria — it is fact”

“As an actor, I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters, often solving fictitious problems,” DiCaprio continued. “I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way — as if it were a fiction, as if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away.”

Leonardo tells attendees : “You can make history, or you will be vilified by it.”

Watch the speech :

Source : THR.com

- Victoria Bekham – Understated, compassionate, philanthropic.

Victoria was at the UN in New York, fresh off her appointment as Goodwill Ambassador. She spoke about wanting to empower women, about visiting Cape Town and wanting to learn more about women and children in developing communities. She talked about being a mother and how that’s shaped her worldview.

“Victoria the celebrity. Victoria the designer. Victoria the philanthropist.” (laineygossip.com)

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