Every week, Bor Beekman, Robert van Gijssel, Merlijn Kerkhof, Anna van Leeuwen or Herien Wensink take a position in the world of film, music, theater or visual arts. This week: Leonardo DiCaprio is a rare tree
‘Don’t Look Up…’, the headline warned The Mail on Sunday‘Otherwise you’ll see the eco-hypocritical Leonardo DiCaprio on his 110 million pound yacht’.
Everyone is watching, of course. And so the readers of the British Sunday newspaper bent over the telephoto shots of the 47-year-old actor from the Netflix satire about climate change. He was lying – god damn it! – with hands folded behind head, lounging half naked on the deck of such a CO2-vomiting giant ship, near the Caribbean St. Barts. It concerned the Vava II, a yacht with its own Wikipedia page, on which the owner can also be found: a Swiss pharmaceutical billionaire.
DiCaprio had celebrated New Year’s Eve, like you do as a star. First sit up and dine at the Unicef gala in dream resort Eden Rock, an annual indulgence for the super rich: another 4 million for the poor children. Then on to the party aboard the Vava II with hundreds of fellow guests, including rapper Drake and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
The American news channel Fox pulled out an entire panel, to speak of enough shame. “Another example of Hollywood hypocrisy!” the presenter kicked off. Four commentators went wild: that you can’t be both an environmentalist and celebrate such a luxurious lifestyle, that you should never listen to Hollywood stars like DiCaprio preach anyway, because they only want ‘we’ to do or not do something to help the world. save us from paying the price for their luxurious lives.
Jason Chaffetz, former politician and Trumpian, advocated selective deforestation: ‘When I see that photo, I just think: Hey Leo, shave those armpits!’
It could have just been a scene from Don’t Look Up.
DiCaprio calls himself “actor and environmentalist” on his social media, and the activist is sometimes head-butted. When he bought an island off Belize in 2015 to build a dream resort for ecologically responsible super-rich, locals revolted for fear of damage to the fish population.
But DiCaprio has also (privately and through his foundation) donated funds to conservation that would allow you to easily purchase such a giant yacht, even two.
This week the BBC announced that a newly discovered tree species from the Ebo forest in Cameroon will now go through life as the Uvariopsis dicaprio. The extremely rare tree was named after the actor by scientists, because he was ‘crucial’ in drawing attention to the protest against timber extraction in the nature reserve. The Cameroonian government succumbed to the publicity pressure: no cap after all.
Call it a star privilege: you hang out on the couch, send a tweet or two and save a tropical rainforest. But what else should you tweet about?
Sometimes mocked for his commitment to the rainforest, pop star Sting was once honored with a frog of his own, the Dendropsophus stingic. And now DiCaprio is a tree, with cheerful bunches of yellow flowers on the trunk – there are photos of that too. Let’s embrace that tree.