Help Haiti: celebrities and fundraising shows: a critical analysis of celebrities' role in Belgian and Dutch charity shows

Media and celebrities have become major supporters of philanthropy during the last decades. On numerous occasions, they demonstrate compassion towards the suffering, draw our attention to social issues, and lead fundraising campaigns for good causes. Sometimes, these efforts culminate in so-called telethons – or, to use the concept we propose, “media charity events” – broadcast to raise funds for victims of humanitarian crises and disasters. Interestingly, celebrities have become (or have even always been) a key element in these media charity events. They present the show, cheer it up with music, or parade with oversized checks. However, although their inclusion in media charity events may seem natural and evident, it is not always unproblematic as they might overshadow the cause or the victims and turn compassion into ‘charitainment’, an (overly) entertaining and light version of charity. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically analyze the possible ways in which celebrities participate in media charity events and what implications this involvement has for the nature of these events and their relationship with the audience. This chapter addresses these questions by critically analyzing the television charity shows that were broadcast in the Netherlands and in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium) after the 2010 Haitian earthquake. Our critical discourse analysis (CDA), which is based on Chouliaraki’s (2006, 2008) text-analytical interpretation of CDA, identifies four key roles that celebrities can play in media charity events. Firstly, celebrities function as principal motivators, while they also render distant suffering relevant to domestic audiences. Thirdly, they grant media charity events an aura of exclusiveness and glamour, and finally, they contribute to the commodification of charity. These results partly echo previous criticisms on celebrity charity, for instance that celebrities move the attention away from the distant suffering to the local audiences, which rewrites the problematic issue into a story about ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Also, it is shown how exactly celebrities’ involvement adds to the transposition of compassion into a spectacle of charitainment and competition. Especially in the Flemish media charity event, competition was artificially stimulated through the interprovincial contest among celebrities to raise the highest amount of donations. By contrast, the Dutch show repeatedly stressed the unity of the Netherlands, but in subtle ways, this also proved to have the single purpose of raising more money. Furthermore, celebrities are also used to increase the reciprocity with and the personal satisfaction of the audience. Ordinary people are allowed to have contact with the otherwise unreachable stars and they are granted the reward of a telephone conversation with a certain celebrity for their donation. Still, there is a danger of what we call ‘celebrity charity fatigue’, since there could be an overexposure to celebrities, reducing the exclusiveness of their involvement and the glamour they add to the cause. Overall, both the Dutch and the Flemish event demonstrate that celebrities are important discursive elements in the articulation of a dominant discourse of charity. This discourse is focused on raising relief aid by dwelling on compassion and an overtly positive goal of hope