Showtime recently aired a four-part documentary called We Need to Talk About Cosby. This insightful, detailed, and well-put-together series talks about the rise and fall of comedian Bill Cosby. Cosby was found out to have sexually assaulted hundreds of women during his prime. It acknowledges that we, as a society, whether we want to believe it or not, enabled him through our love of the man and disbelief that he could ever do anything devious, because of this “America’s dad” image that he built up (which turned out to be nothing but a facade, in retrospect.)
This raises a big question: Why do the celebrities that we look up to and hold in such high regard end up being the biggest monsters pretending to be saints? This particular thing has happened not just with Cosby, but has also taken a concerning rise due to the MeToo movement, which has allowed more and more celebrities to be exposed as less-than-ideal. Particularly popular celebrities like Louis C.K., Dustin Hoffman, Casey Affleck, and many more have been accused, or found to have committed, sexual misconduct.
The thing about this is, we have all been guilty of having those celebrities that we have praised and defended no matter what, only to have everything come crashing down when allegation after allegation surfaces, and the facade is ripped off, even me and my loved ones. I must admit that I admire Shia LaBeouf as an actor after seeing movies like American Honey and Pieces of a Woman as well as Michael Jackson as a performer, but I do recognize that the men are (or were) less-than-ideal in real-life. It was also pretty jarring for my mother to find out that Kevin Spacey was one of the many celebrities named in sexual assault/misconduct allegations, because she had been a big fan of him and his work for years.
It’s not just the MeToo movement, however. Other beloved celebrities like R Kelly, Jared Fogle, and Lori Loughlin have been discovered to have committed various crimes, forever tarnishing their own images in the public eye. So, why do some of the celebrities we look up to and admire end up being real-life monsters?
Well, to put it simply, just because a famous person presents a “holier-than-thou” image to the unsuspecting fan, doesn’t mean that they are so. After all, they are human beings, just like the average Joe on the streets, so the idea that they should be praised as otherworldly gods is pretty unrealistic, and extremely unlikely to be the case.
However, just because there are some bad apples out there, doesn’t mean we should totally discredit this industry and the people who work in it. After all, there are undoubtedly plenty of good people still left in the entertainment industry, and we need to recognize it. Though, we should work on holding celebrities to a certain standard when their rather questionable actions are eventually revealed to the public. Because, after all, just like us, they are human, and prone to doing some pretty terrible things, even if their “clean celebrity” image says otherwise.
