For some time now, some celebrity revelations have been causing real media hurricanes, generating intense social debates on controversial topics that until now had been more or less taboo. This is what has happened not long ago with the ‘boom’ generated by the news that Ana Obregon she has resorted to surrogacy to become a grandmother three years after the death of her son. But cases like the docuseries of Rocio Carrascothe suicide of Veronica Forqué and the sex tape of santi millan They have also served to speak openly about sexist violence, mental health and that the leaking of intimate images without the consent of its protagonists is a crime. The ‘vips’ are opening melons that previously remained tightly sealed. Why is this phenomenon happening now? Is it positive that it occurs or can it sometimes normalize or even trivialize crimes and illegalities? Can it be counterproductive that these issues even jump to the public eye? political agenda precisely through the ‘celebrities’?
According to Ferran Gimenez, sociologist expert in social movements and associate professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the origin of this phenomenon lies in a society like today’s, “extremely mediatized”. “We live in a neoliberal and hyper-individualist society, and the references we have from the closest environment have a relative capacity to condition. The second reference link is the one that arrives via the media, and right now the great exponent are ‘youtubers’, ‘influencers ‘ and ‘tiktokers’. If there were not that communication explosion via social networks, the impact of these cases would not be so great,” he points out.
Put on the agenda issues that are not talked about
Giménez believes that opening this type of debate is positive in itself. Mainly, because “it allows to put on the public agenda, and even political, aspects of reality about which sometimes not enough is said”. But it does carry some dangers. The famous “do not usually contribute, normally, a sufficiently argued speech and there are people who take them as ethical, moral or behavioral references, when they are not”. Telling, in addition, that they are cases privileged. “Obregón has done it because she has money, she is a white, upper-class woman,” adds the sociologist.
match him Sergio Villanueva, Professor of Communication at the University of Barcelona (UB), who believes that journalists are increasingly aware that “entertainment and popular culture can be used to introduce issues into public debate and then deal with them from the information”. He although he also warns of the risks. “The objective of celebrities is not to inform. Rocío Carrasco did not intend to warn against sexist violence, but rather to improve its public image. And Ana Obregón wanted to sell exclusives. There is a conflict of objectives and legitimacies there.”
He also points to another danger: “That the debate is dealt with in the media with a very broad brush, very contaminated by the language of entertainment”. That is to say, that it is distorted and becomes trivial. “Using according to what concepts when communicating these issues can lead to wrong ways of approaching them, and false attributes are associated with some practices that later, when the social debate evolves, will be very difficult to change.”
pollute the debate
Villanueva recalls that in the case of Rocío Carrasco, sexist violence was treated with terms that had a lot to do with previous sympathy or antipathy towards the character herself. And now with Obregón and surrogate pregnancy, many issues have been mixed, such as the age of the presenter or that the baby was finally her grandson. “By bringing the debate from Ana Obregón, it has been impregnated with many concepts that come from the tabloidswhen it should be more of a discussion of bioethics and legal aspects“he points.
Maria Trinidad Bretons, professor of Sociology at the UB, also talks about the transformation suffered in recent years. “The panorama has completely changed as a result of social networks. The behaviors that we citizens have using the new media and the traditional ones have totally modified our idea of what debate and information mean.”
The sociologist is very critical: “We have entered into some rules that, more than debate, noise is made. It does not delve into anything, it is a kind of trickle of the same and even things that are known are reserved to ensure that you stay tuned tomorrow. We don’t add any element, just small curiosities, so we don’t fill the debate with something serious, but with morbidity”.
The Sara Montiel case
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the journalist Pillar Eyre, specialized in the gossip, values instead that the ‘vips’ serve to open Pandora’s box on certain issues. Because before they were much more opaque. “When I started in journalism and did interviews in the 80s, what people did was hide all kinds of transgressive attitudes and that they did not follow social norms”. But he does not attribute the merit of all this to the ‘celebrities’, but to society itself. “Social advances, progress, is what gives confidence and strength to these public figures to let them manifest.”
The author of books such as ‘Yo, el Rey’ recalls another case with similarities to that of Obregón that was treated very differently: that of the adoption of the children of sarah montiel. “At no time did we question or ask what that surrogate process had been like, which was what it was called then, because there was a limit that could not be crossed. And if you crossed it, there were consequences,” he concludes.