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Celebrity diplomacy, spectacle andBarack ObamaDouglas Kellner aa University of California Los Angeles, USA

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To cite this article: Douglas Kellner (2010): Celebrity diplomacy, spectacle and Barack Obama,Celebrity Studies, 1:1, 121-123

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Celebrity StudiesVol. 1, No. 1, March 2010, 121–123

ISSN 1939-2397 print/ISSN 1939-2400 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/19392390903519156http://www.informaworld.com

RCEL1939-23971939-2400Celebrity Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan 2010: pp. 0–0Celebrity StudiesCelebrity diplomacy, spectacle and Barack ObamaCelebrity StudiesD. KellnerDouglas Kellner*

University of California Los Angeles, USA

In an era when media culture is at the centre of politics, both in the sense of elections andgoverning, it is not surprising that celebrity diplomacy is growing in scope and perhapssignificance. As celebrities assume more important roles in politics, I would argue that thephenomenon is highly ambiguous and difficult to generalise about or appraise at this pointin time. In one of the first attempts to thoroughly examine the phenomenon of celebritypolitics, Andrew Cooper’s Celebrity diplomacy (2009) sets out a broadly positiveappraisal of celebrities’ interventions in diplomacy – laying out a critical history thatdemonstrates a long entwinement of celebrities and political causes, from AudreyHepburn to Princess Diana and contemporary examples such as Bono and Bob Geldof.While Cooper is generally intrigued by celebrity diplomacy, he also calls attention to itsdefects – such as the deflection of attention from more serious diplomatic efforts orinformed professionals as spokesmen for issues. Cooper also points to the dangers of ama-teurism and celebrity diplomats blundering or discrediting good causes, as well as the con-centration of celebrity diplomacy in the North rather than the South.1

Reflecting upon, Barack Obama’s election as US President, I want to use Cooper’swork as a launch-pad for a brief discussion of how a politician’s celebrity can aid inunderstanding the intersection of celebrity and politics. In so doing, I want to add theconcept of media spectacle to Cooper’s analysis. That is, when daily cable news, presidentialcampaigns and major media events are presented in the form of media spectacle it is likelythat the media attention and often spectacle produced by celebrity activism will publicisetheir issues, and make such celebrity diplomats more public and perhaps effectiveadvocates for their causes than normal diplomats. Obama arguably won the presidencybecause of his effectiveness at mobilising media spectacle, whether on the campaign trail,traditional media publicity or through the internet, such as YouTube videos such as‘Obama girl’ and ‘Yes we can’, as well as the circulation of Obama’s speeches, whichwere complemented by other videos made by Obama’s often young supporters. Clearly,by the end of the long presidential campaign, Obama emerged as a celebrity of the highestorder.2

Both during the campaign and now in his role as president, Obama has used his super-celebrity status to engage in public diplomacy for his agenda. In part, his phenomenalpopularity, after the bitter anger throughout the world at the Bush–Cheney administration,is a positive antidote to rising and dangerous anti-Americanism. In turn, it also providesleverage as a global diplomat to promote his agendas. After Obama’s trips to Europe, the

*Email: kellner@ucla.edu

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United Kingdom, Trinidad, Ghana and other places during his first months as president, itmay be the case that Obama is the world’s major super global celebrity bar none – ajudgement that might explain Obama’s highly controversial award of the Nobel PeacePrize in October 2009.

Hence I would argue that, in the contemporary era of media spectacle, it helps politi-cians to be global celebrities to effectively promote national interests or deal with globalissues. Cooper notes how Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela have used their superstarcelebrity status to promote global issues and engage in celebrity diplomacy after theirterms in office. Obama’s position suggests that in an era of escalating media spectaclemore politicians, including those still active, will use their rock star status and access tothe media as an instrument to push through their issues or agendas.

Obama’s success in celebrity diplomacy highlights the disjuncture with the Bush/Cheney administration. As I have argued elsewhere,3 their failed unilateral and highlycentralized diplomacy (or anti-diplomacy) shows the need for a broad range of diplomaticefforts to grapple with global problems – ranging from official national and global institu-tions and diplomats to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to celebrity diplomats.More than ever, I think that there is global awareness of environmental crisis, poverty,global health problems and issues around food and agriculture, water and the eco-systemitself, as well as problems concerning political refugees, starvation and localized politicalproblems – problems so enormous that they need multiple efforts, including celebritydiplomacy. The failure of traditional diplomacy, I think, is illustrated dramatically by thefailure of the Bush–Cheney Iraq fiasco: a small group of neo-conservatives (Neocons)pushed this policy through with a highly centralised campaign of true believers promotingIraq as a site of weapons of mass destruction. The Neocons, with the help of Colin Powell(who should have known better), were able to ram the policy that enabled the Bush–Cheney administration to invade and occupy Iraq through the United Nations and the USCongress. At the same time, they excluded views not in line with this small secretivegroup, including a large number of CIA intelligence experts, State Department diplomatsand others who went public with their criticism of how the Iraq disaster was mis-organisedand mis-managed from the start.

As noted, Obama’s recent world tours and meetings with European, African, Asianand Latin American leaders show how politicians are becoming major celebrities and howcelebrity politics is normalised as an important, perhaps key, segment of global andregional politics. For example, Fidel Castro has long been a superstar celebrity politicianin Latin America, but also globally, and now Hugo Chavez seems to have aspired toFidel’s model of celebrity politician and has become something of a master of politicalspectacle. One can argue one way or another about Chavez’s politics and tactics, but it isclear that he is a master of media spectacle and celebrity politics. In his trip to the UnitedNations a couple of years ago, he appeared after George W. Bush and roamed around thestage saying that he detected the smell of sulphur, and perhaps the Devil had just beenbefore them.

You could argue that this is bad politics, protocol and diplomacy, but it is greatperformance art and gets great media attention, as did the Iraqi journalist who threw hisshoes at Bush – although this cost him some months in prison. Chavez’s gesture of givingObama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s book on US imperialism in Latin America and gettinga picture of Obama smiling and shaking hands at the Trinidad meeting for leaders of theAmericas was a great example of political theatre. The morning after this meeting I noticedon the BBC website that Galeano’s ‘Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of thepillage of a continent’ (1997), which was ranked 54,295 on the sales charts of bookseller

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Amazon.com, had risen to number 2. I recall an earlier incident where Chavez held out aNoam Chomsky book, and in one day it had skyrocketed up the Amazon list – if Obama isthe world’s superstar celebrity politician, Chavez is the number 1 book promoter.

Finally, as a strong critique of celebrity diplomacy, I would suggest that a major effectthat some may deem negative would be that celebrity diplomacy contributes to the cultureof celebrity where our idols, our role models and ideals, are constructed by media imagesand spectacle. I have suggested that this is the case in politics alluding to Obama as globalsuper-celebrity and Cooper’s analysis of Bill Clinton as global superstar diplomat. In thisworld of media spectacle there may be pressure for politicians, as well as celebritydiplomats, to substitute spectacle for substance and engage in symbolic politics rather thanthe hard work of diplomacy, policy formations and debate, compromise, and then thelaborious work of implementation. On the other hand, a politician’s celebrity, or celebritydiplomacy of the sort that Cooper has analysed, can help to implement and push throughpolicies that may effectively address difficult problems. Celebrity may therefore be a vitalaid to policy implementation and traditional politics and diplomacy in the current mediaage, with positive effects as well as potentially negative ones. Obviously, celebrity politicsis a relatively new phenomenon, and it is still too early to appraise its effects andconsequences for contemporary politics.

Notes1. Although Cooper does provide a good analysis of emerging celebrity diplomats from Africa,

Bollywood and other non-western sites in one chapter.2. For my views on the centrality of media spectacle in contemporary politics and Obama’s

mastery of media spectacle as a prime cause of his political success, see Kellner 2009.3. See Kellner 2005.

ReferencesCooper, A.F., 2009. Celebrity diplomacy. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.Galeano, E., 1997. Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. New York:

Monthly Review Press.Kellner, D., 2005. Media spectacle and the crisis of democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press.Kellner, D., 2009. Barack Obama and celebrity spectacle. International Journal of Communication,

3 (1), 1–20.

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