Opinion
Forget the latest offering on Netflix: my favourite new show is the celebrity tantrum. After all, it’s the great equaliser, and in the era of “eat the rich”, its triumphant return is a deliciously embarrassing morsel to appease the ravenous masses.
Centre stage was American Idol alum and TV host Kelly Clarkson, who has whipped up a controversy of her own making, throwing a royal rich person tantrum after allegedly being refused the opportunity to splash a small fortune on a $US15,000 ($22,000) mechanical singing bird called Molly.
In a rant on social media, the TV host and singer claimed that the store “treated her like Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman,” looked at her like “she couldn’t afford” the item, and “elevator eyed” her. Because being treated like an average person and not the very important celebrity that you are is a relatable outrage, apparently.
After Clarkson’s rant, the Brooklyn boutique, Art of Play, denied they targeted Clarkson, joking that they had increased the price to $15mil.
And if you thought that was a storm in a tantrum teacup, it was followed by a more serious report in New York, alleging that actress Selma Blair was involved in an in-flight incident where she bit a flight attendant, kicked a police officer, and later assaulted a nurse. While Blair’s representatives cited a “medical emergency” as reason for the behaviour, alluding to her years suffering from MS, social media was having none of it, with several commenters pointing out that she has bitten several celebrities in previous incidents, including fellow actress Sienna Miller and model Kate Moss.
Apparently, celebrities spend all their time convincing us that they desperately want to be treated just like us, complaining about trailing paparazzi and unwanted attention – and then when they’re actually treated like regular folk, they chuck a wally and try to have a shopkeeper cancelled.
Sure, we love a low-stakes drama, particularly one that befalls the rich and famous – it’s what has made a bunch of American housewives one of the most popular shows on TV. But is there anything more obnoxious than a squillionaire TV host outraged over being denied the opportunity to purchase a $22,000 bird – and then comparing herself to the most famous hooker of all time?
The Pretty Woman alignment is particularly galling – that Clarkson sees herself reflected in a struggling sex worker dreaming of a better life beyond accepting cash for a week of favours is at best delusional. Maybe back in 2002, when she swept up the Idol crown, but 25 years and a $60 million fortune later, it reads like an egregious attempt to paint herself as the victim.
As the Hollywood elite circulate within their manufactured world of perfection, PR, and plenty of money, us normies wait for that delicious moment of schadenfreude when their deftly controlled personas experience a momentary blip and they show us what they’re really like. It makes us feel better about ourselves, and as an added bonus, it brings them down a peg. And with our eyes always trained on them – particularly in the era of video phones in everyone’s pocket – any sniff of bad behaviour is sure to come out, no matter how much they try to hide it.
Back in 2005, when Russell Crowe was famously arrested for throwing a phone at a hotel worker, he settled with his accuser out of court and avoided the embarrassment of the security footage making the nightly news. The legendary footage of Rusty being led out of the hotel in handcuffs gave celebrity rags and nightly talkshows weeks of fodder and was his final humiliation.
Nowadays, the chattering peanut galleries of TikTok and Twitter have so little to gossip about, celebrity accounts like DeuxMoi are left with obscure Love Island contestants and decade-old Nick Cage rumours to report on. Throw in a $22,000 bird that no one can buy, and Clarkson apparently thinks you’ve got a Greek tragedy for the ages.
The Greeks loved a play packed full of hubris, often satirising the self-important and delivering dramatic downfalls to the power-hungry, thoroughly delighting the masses. Whether celebrities like it or not, social media has become our modern-day Colosseum – but for the first time in history, it democratises the metaphorical thumbs-down.
Though the modern celebrity might see themselves as a tragic hero, multimillionaire celebrities like Kelly Clarkson – holding court until recently over a daily TV audience of 1.3 million – have more in common with Kim Kardashian than Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman.
And as a result of her achingly out-of-touch rant, Clarkson may have put her relatable-reality-show-girl-done-good image in jeopardy with the swipe of a finger and a thousand thumbs-down emojis in the comments.
Bianca O’Neill is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.
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