Of Climate Change

Geoforum 40 (2009) 395–406 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Conspicuous redemption? Reflections on the promises and perils of the ‘Celebritization’ of climate change Maxwell T. Boykoff a,1,*, Michael K. Goodman b,1 a Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom b Department of Geography, King’s College London, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom article info abstract Article history: With rising public awareness of climate change, celebrities have become an increasingly important com- Received 17 July 2007 munity of non nation-state ‘actors’ influencing discourse and action, thereby comprising an emergent cli- Received in revised form 1 April 2008 mate science–policy–celebrity complex. Some feel that these amplified and prominent voices contribute to greater public understanding of climate change science, as well as potentially catalyze climate policy cooperation. However, critics posit that increased involvement from the entertainment industry has not Keywords: served to influence substantive long-term advancements in these arenas; rather, it has instead reduced Climate change the politics of climate change to the domain of fashion and fad, devoid of political and public saliency. Celebrity Through tracking media coverage in Australia, Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom, we Science–policy Consumption map out the terrain of a ‘Politicized Celebrity System’ in attempts to cut through dualistic characteriza- Framing tions of celebrity involvement in politics. We develop a classification system of the various types of Media climate change celebrity activities, and situate movements in contemporary consumer- and spectacle- Discourse driven carbon-based society. Through these analyses, we place dynamic and contested interactions in a spatially and temporally-sensitive ‘Cultural Circuits of Climate Change Celebrities’ model. In so doing, first we explore how these newly ‘authorized’ speakers and ‘experts’ might open up spaces in the public sphere and the science/policy nexus through ‘celebritization’ effects. Second, we examine how the celebrity as the ‘heroic individual’ seeking ‘conspicuous redemption’ may focus climate change actions through individualist frames. Overall, this paper explores potential promises, pitfalls and contradictions of this increasingly entrenched set of ‘agents’ in the cultural politics of climate change. Thus, as a form of climate change action, we consider whether it is more effective to ‘plant’ celebrities instead of trees. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction: Industry without smokestacks face to the Second Annual Green Issue of Vanity Fair magazine, May 2007. ‘Polar bears are imperiled by the melting of the Arctic ice. That Vanity Fair—the magazine of record for Hollywood haute The Bush administration, which has yet to decide whether couture politics and culture—can un-ironically present investiga- to list the polar bear as a threatened species, understands tive journalism on the privatization of water and the ‘gasping’ the power of symbols, and has warned government scien- Amazonian environment amidst meteorically-expensive designer tists not to speak publicly about polar bears or climate clothing, watches, and sunglasses advertisements is at the heart change at international meetings. Knut, the cub on our cover, of this paper. Clearly, as the opening selection highlights, it seems was born in the Berlin Zoo. We brought him together with now that both celebrities, who are more often crossing the bound- Leonardo DiCaprio the only way we could, in a photomon- aries of ‘stardom’ and politics, and the environment have found tage. Knut was photographed by Annie Leibovitz in Berlin. powerful cultural symbols in each other. Indeed, as we argue here, DiCaprio, no stranger to icebergs, was photographed by the extent to which these connections are being made is unprece- Leibovitz at the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, in Iceland. Yes, dented in their sheer number and intensity of media exposure. we know, there are no polar bears in Iceland. If current This increase in media coverage of celebrities and climate trends continue, there won’t be any in Canada either.’ Pre- change/global warming illustrates a need for an understanding of the new and changing connections of the celebritization of climate change where media, politics and science intersect. We thus wish * Corresponding author. to build on the somewhat disparate literatures on global environ- E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.T. Boykoff), michael.k.good- [email protected] (M.K. Goodman). mental discourses (e.g. Taylor and Buttel, 1992; Hajer, 1995; Adger 1 Both authors contributed equally to this paper. et al., 2001), work on the commodification of nature (e.g. Castree, 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.04.006 396 M.T. Boykoff, M.K. Goodman / Geoforum 40 (2009) 395–406 2003; Escobar, 1996; Price, 1995; Smith, 1998), aesthetic politics been defined as those whose activities are more prominent and and commodity cultures (e.g. Bryant and Goodman, 2004; Good- agency more amplified than the general population. In contempo- man, 2004; Jackson, 1999, 2002) and cultural studies (e.g. Marshall, rary society, celebrities undoubtedly garner increased attention in 2004; Turner, 2004; Cashmore, 2006). The over-riding task of this the public purview (Marshall, 1997; Street, 2004). Through inter- paper is to provide a more critical and nuanced approach to celeb- acting media representations—television, films, books, flyers, rity politics and their potential effects by introducing actors and newspapers, magazines, radio and internet2—certain personalities other celebrities as important non-nation-state figures in the dis- have become public figures and thus ‘intimate strangers’ (Schickel, cursive, material and media politics surrounding climate change. 2000). An important and growing subset of celebrity—and the topic In this, we work to get beyond dualistic characterizations of celeb- of this paper—involves those who have leveraged such privileged rity politics as mere ‘distraction’ (Weiskel, 2005)—a position that voices to raise public and policy attention to various social, political, draws from and re-works parts of the Frankfurt School—versus economic, cultural and environmental issues. ‘awareness’ raising and new forms of ‘deliberative democracy’ Street (2004) discusses two variants of ‘celebrity politicians’: (Goodnight, 2005; Corner and Pels, 2003). What we are proposing there are political figures who have reached celebrity status here, then, is a new lens from which to address and conceptualize through their high-profile activities (e.g. celebrity politicians), and the growing confluences of science, celebrities, and politics in a no- celebrities who comment on political and politicized issues, but vel form of the cultural politics of climate change. not from elected office (e.g. celebrity politicians).3 Focusing on the In presenting these lenses, what we have termed the Politicized later, key features include the particular media attention as well as Celebrity System and the model of the Cultural Circuits of Climate audience support their views can warrant, and the use of the celeb- Change Celebrities that this System slots into, we remain rather rity platform to ‘‘speak out on specific causes and for particular ambivalent in this paper to the wider consequences of the growing interests with a view to influencing political outcomes” (Street, celebritization of climate change and the spectacle-ization of poli- 2004, p. 438). Divergent perspectives on the roles of celebrity—ana- tics more generally. While this is perhaps too ambivalent for some, lytical, descriptive and normative—have raised questions along it is for reasons of space that we reserve more overtly critical and themes of whether such activities represent democratic movements normative commentary for future work on this topic; rather the by and for ‘the people’ and the public realm, or rather plutocratic, descriptions, characterizations and conceptualizations of the unique and extra-ordinary elite behaviors of distraction. conspicuous redemption of celebrities in their media involvement In these mediated spaces of prominent actors moving in society, in climate change should be seen as an initial opening up of critical there is a long history of celebrities shaping discursive and mate- and theoretical space from which to investigate this particularly rial considerations in the public space. For instance, Braudy interesting phenomenon in the contemporary cultural and media (1986) historicizes contemporary celebrity through considerations landscapes of the environment. of ‘fame’ and ‘recognition’, and traces such movements to ancient We proceed as follows. First, we explore who these climate Greek Sophists. These activities ran concurrent with the rise of or- celebrities are and how they function through the circulations of a ganized communication arts (or Rhetoric) (Briggs and Burke, 2005), Politicized Celebrity System. Second, we focus on the more recent with celebrity and communications both expanding their reach rise of specific celebrity involvement in climate change. Here we through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Performance art, plays, outline prominent celebrity initiatives and endeavors, and in so poetry, news and debate have provided spaces from which prom-

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