Did the coronavirus pandemic kill celebrity culture?

Celebs who have the coronavirus, major events going virtual, and celebrities weighing in on the Black Lives Matter protests – this, in a nutshell, is what modern-day celebrity reporting looks like in a time of Covid-19.

Gone are the days when your favourite celebrity’s days were filled with fabulous luncheons, trips to the spa, envy-worthy tropical getaways and the fanciest soirees on the social calendar. Virtually everything from the annual Met Gala and all the awards show that follow, to concerts and weekly launch events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future. 

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Now, most of your faves live just like you. Endless days spent at home wallowing through the different stages of boredom, interrupted only by daydreams of what they might have been doing in an alternate universe where the coronavirus pandemic did not hit. 

During her first show during the global lockdown, shot in her living room in her lavish R412 million beach-front mansion, comedian and television personality Ellen Degeneres joked that being in quarantine was like being in jail because she had been wearing the same clothes for days on end and “everyone in here is gay.” A joke she received scathing backlash for. 

This leaves reporters with little to no wiggle room when it comes to the topics that often filled celebrity pages prior to the pandemic. 

As one Vanity Fair article simply put it, “there is no good celebrity content right now.”

And thanks to the stay-at-home orders, people now have more time on their hands to keep up with whatever is happening in their favourite celebrity’s life. 

“Entertainment reporting has somewhat reverted back to basics where the reporting on entertainment was more about what the talent or creative does than who they are and their contrived life,” said entertainment commentator and television presenter Phil Mphela.  

He believes that social media and the posts people were able to put up when they were allowed out fed into this interest but adds that the lockdown expedited a process that he felt was already on the way – the return to caring about a media personality’s work more than we care about they lives they pretend to live. 

“At some point things were going to move away from just being celebrities going to parties and red carpets.” 

“Anybody who didn’t see it coming really was not prepared for the game anyway.”

Actress and writer Palesa Buyeye holds a similar opinion to Mphela’s, stating “You can kind of see who makes the money and who pretends. You saw it from the first few days of lockdown.” 

Buyeye explains that part of the reason for this is the lack of a distinction between actual celebrities and influencers in South Africa. 

“In the UK and the US, you have a group of strong influencers across every single industry like fitness, beauty, food etc and then you have your A-list celebrities. In SA, it’s like our influencers are celebrities. It’s one thing.”

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She went on to theorise that this perhaps due to the fact that neither industry is that big in our country and that made it easier for the lines to become so blurred. 

This theory becomes easier to believe when you see just how many of our celebrities have ventured into digital content creation to keep busy and stay afloat financially. 

Since the lockdown, various celebrities have either started new YouTube channels or dusted off channels they had neglected. Others are doing more live streams, collaborating with others as a way of attracting eyeballs and musicians have ventured into live streams and digital concerts. 

Concerts such as the ViacomCBS and Global Citizen ‘One World: Together At Home’ series and Shimza’s weekly #LockdownHouseParty DJ set streams.

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“It’s a situation where you either adapt or you die. If a celebrity’s brand is anchored in other people making them a celebrity rather than what they do, and how they package themselves, then they are going to wither and die with the old school [way] of doing things,” cautions Mphela. 

“To adapt, you actually have to have a plan. If you’re just a celebrity for the sake of being a celebrity then you’re not going to survive and that’s what we’re seeing.” 

Like Mphela, Buyeye believes that the lockdown has placed strain on those who have based their careers on keeping up appearances, but adds that she has observed the occurrence of things that she believes never would have happened were it not for the current circumstances. Things such as collaborations between macro and micro-influencers.

Essentially, this period is doing the work of a sieve – helping sift through the mess to separate those who were meant to be celebs from those who are simply trying. 

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