So Amy Winehouse exists. She’s kind of a situation if ever there has been a situation, you know? And I think she’s got to be a sociological study waiting to happen, between the way she chooses to image herself and the way she behaves, to say nothing of the intersection of the two. A real piece of work, Amy Winehouse.
Amy Winehouse (who I’m considering a sort of Celebrity A here; she could be Celebrity B, she could be Robert Downey Jr., etc.) is definitely a member of a power elite. Or a sort of power elite, anyway. She doesn’t have her finger on the button, but she’s arguably beautiful, she has a lot of money (ten million pounds, it was recently revealed), she has a significant fan base that she has some influence over, etc. That gives her a lot of control over her own destiny, and I’d definitely say she’s transcending “the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women,” to borrow from C. Wright Mills (and his book The Power Elite). Prison is one such transcended environment: strip her of her success and thus her wealth, and you have a poor Jewish hoodlum, outrageously styled and killing herself with drugs. Because she was given a stage to share her talents, she’s a rock star. Take that away and she’s a junkie who would surely be ignored and put in jail.
A modern celebrity doesn’t appeal to any narrow set of people, and Amy’s no exception. I’m not someone who feels the need to sentence every celebrity into the part of a role model because it won’t do anything to help art, as sad as that may be to say. (Though the rebellion against the position of “role model” isn’t doing a lot for art, either. Bald expressions of sexuality have become stand-ins for legitimate expression, and as a result it seems to take less and less to impress the general public. A little eyeliner and a dude might as well be the Elvis of our time. Until the next such dude, anyhow, and it seems they’re makin’ them things every day.) That said, sound decision making never hurt anyone, and Winehouse, like a host of other celebrities, could use some. By choosing not to seek help for her laundry list of problems—“fail[ing] to act, … fail[ing] to make decisions”—she hurts not only herself but the culture around her and the participants in that culture. The media has damned Amy at every turn for her destructive behaviour, but they’re giving her coverage anyway. She’s everywhere with her “cool style,” her abilities, her outrageous behaviour, and oh yeah, that’s bad we guess. So very bad, but anyway, that eyeliner. How does she do it?
It sends a message. And really, while Winehouse (and other careless, slippery, destructive celebrities who waste, abuse, or otherwise pervert their influence) is the one making an ass out of herself, the media—another powerful elite—is giving her heaps of help along the way. I guess when you think about it that way, she might have her finger on the button after all.
