THE R LIST Social Activism in fancy Tones On how celebrities engage to improve contemporary society BY LAURENCE HOFFMANN Promoting oneself is commonly accepted, if not practiced, by people in all strata of society. Individuals are more and more managing themselves as brands, a trend put in motion by social media like Facebook and Twitter, that heightens the need to make an original mark in a world over-crowded with competing information. On the business side this applies to advertisements, which effectively use celebrities to create instant familiarity through the immediate recognition of a particular celebrity’s brand. Recently self-branding has taken a new turn as more popular figures have applied their massmarket appeal to serious social issues. A cursory list of examples includes Mark Ruffalo and Yoko Ono with son Sean Lennon opposing fracking with Artists Against Fracking; Joaquin Phoenix defending the rights of people and animals together with -respectively- Amnesty International and Peta; Leonardo Di Caprio trying to prevent total degradation of the environment with Live Earth and Wildlife Conservation Society; Ziggy Marley, Lady Gaga, Linkin’ Park, BBKing and others making efforts to bring music education into disadvantaged public schools with Little Kids Rock; George Clooney is one of the United Nations Messengers Of Peace and together with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and others has founded Not On Our Watch to condemn the violations of human rights in Darfur, Burma, and Zimbabwe; Angelina Jolie is Special Envoy for the United Nations. These are just a few of the causes in which some of the most prominent American stars emerge as “social activists” and in some cases as “social entrepreneurs”. For his activities (other than being Walden Smith in Two and a Half Men and occasionally appearing on the cover of magazines with old and new flames) Ashton Kutcher can be considered a “social entrepreneur”. The business activities of his company A-Grade are geared towards improvements in contemporary society.At TechCrunch, an event that focuses on start-up companies keen to enter the field of technology development and new media held in April/May in NYC, Ashton Kutcher explained the criteria behind the investments of A-Grade and revealed his critical take on corporations. Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, and Michael Arrington, TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013, video stills. Courtesy of Laurence Hoffmann. With his notorious sardonic language typical to an “agent provocateur”, he decries the concept of Big Brother. He warns that societies should prefer the decentralization of the security system instead of accepting that one major entity controls the masses. Ashton proposes that security should be based on the interaction among individuals. This critical approach defines an optimistic point of view on local communities built by the genuine personal relationships between people. Such conviction For his eclectic interests and activities, Ashton belongs -together with all socio-politically engaged celebrities- to that figure so much in vogue in the Renaissance, “the Renaissance Man”. In the 15th and 16th Centuries the reevaluation of the models from Antiquity took an important step. Artists and philosophers were called to court (royalty, aristocracy or new bourgeoisie) to engage into the political discourse and became spokes persons, aka ambassadors. What made them “Renaissance implies a strong criticism towards the general Men” was their versatility in various fields of culture, opinion that our western (and newly BRIC) societies science, politics and the conviction that societies are tending towards a more anonymous global could harmonically entail all these aspects. These system. societies were literally called Utopia, a term that today has taken on the connotation of “illusionary On the practical business level, Ashton focuses and unrealistic”. on financially supporting and strengthening technological platforms that enhance social sharing. This lead to an open conclusion: Is social activism And since interconnectivity is fundamentally an in all its forms a sheer idealistic endeavor or can element of mutual trust, it is especially through social media that a stronger connection between the contribution of mass mediated personae really reach the masses and help make the change? individuals can be achieved and local communities are therefore spontaneously formed. REVOLT <strong>Magazine</strong> Number 4, 2013 4