Selling out

"If you do an advert, then you are off the artistic register forever" So said the eponymous namesake of this blog, and it is perhaps more true today than it has ever been. We seem to exist in a world were celebrity is defined by how many endorsements you can make. Kate Moss has been dropped and rehired more times than it was once thought possible, Jedward make far more from endoresements than they could possibly make from music, lady Gaga is considered more powerful than Oprah when her entire career seems to be an endorsement for herself as a brand. Even beyond this to the World of charity, once, it could be argued, the only for of endorsement that was even vaguely acceptible. We now see charities engaging in the worst excesses of mainstrea media advertising in order to generate revenue.

On this, amongst many other things I am in agreement with Mr. Hicks. There can be no excuse for product endorsement if you, as a performer, want to be considered ethical. There is no such thing as an innocent endorsement, there is no company that is ethical enough to be considered acceptable. This may seem harsh, but let us consider environmental charities. There are huge swathes of the developing world where indigenous peoples are being forcibly resettled in a way that would be considered completely unacceptable, if it wasn't for the fact that they are being removed in the name of environmental protection, This, to me is completely unacceptable and smacks of colonialism. It is not a new phenomena. Diane Fossey the primate researcher treated the indigenous very badly indeed physically assaulting them despite the fact that they had been living side by side with the local gorilla population for thousands of years and could have been a useful resource.

If celebrities thought for even a moment about the long term effects of the products and services and on the people they are influencing I strongly suspect that we would see a dramatic decrease in endorsements, and in my opinion, the World would be a better place....