Raising Africa?: Celebrity and the Rhetoric of the White Saviour

Abstract

The ‘White Savour’ is a timeworn vehicle for celebrities in Hollywood film, where actors perform as heroes who save the day against dark and ominous adversaries. Pop stars take on personas and ‘exotic’ characters as well. And with increasing visibility, the famous perform real-life hero roles as philanthropists for social causes around the so-called ‘developing’ world. This essay explores how the celebrity philanthropist is constructed as redeemer of distant Others and how this role mingles with a celebrity’s on-stage personas to create the White Saviour, a powerful brand of cultural authority. It examines the power of Bono, Jolie and Madonna as key figures in contemporary African celebrity aid and diplomacy work, and at Madonna and Jolie as famous mothers. I argue that their campaigns employ a universalizing rhetoric of individualism that reinscribes colonial narratives of Africa’s diverse peoples as passive and helpless, and that ultimately burnishes the celebrity brand.

Celebrity Advocacy and Women’s Rights in Nigeria

“…Bell (2013) argues that celebrity advocacy in Africa “generates a cultural hegemonic authority that re-centres whiteness, and in turn polishes the celebrity brand.” It does this re-centering by exoticizing nonspecific representations of African countries and peoples, and by creating narratives of near-divine greatness about the celebrity. Bell (2013) further explains that celebrity advocacy in Africa produces material benefits as it maintains a normative discursive space of whiteness. The discourses include neo-colonial stereotypes of African people as passive and helpless.…”

“…Such a narrative obscures the ongoing legacy of colonialism and neo-colonial exploitation anchored by such international organizations as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Daley, 2013). Bell (2013) argues that celebrity advocacy in Africa "generates a cultural hegemonic authority that re-centres whiteness, and in turn polishes the celebrity brand." It does this re-centering by exoticizing nonspecific representations of African countries and peoples, and by creating narratives of near-divine greatness about the celebrity.…”

Instagrammable humanitarianism and the politics of guilt

“…But it is not motivated by the suffering of the people who live in refugee camps, but by the icon- body and the non-sufferers' need to make a difference and experience life in a refugee camp. As such the campaign reproduces a problematic trope in which the Westerners are the active participants, the saviors (Bell 2013), and the sufferers are left without any perceived agency. However, this is not the only facet of the campaign.…”

Exotic endurance: Tourism, fitness and theMarathon des Sables

“…It is precisely here, in the dovetailing of structural and individual commitments to charity, that a postcolonial critique of the MdS is most needed. As many critical scholars have argued, charity is absolutely central to neoliberal modes of governmentality that efface pernicious forms of exclusion by mobilizing highly moralized dispositions of benevolence (Bell, 2013; Kapoor, 2012; Littler, 2008; Magubane, 2008). What this work suggests is that ethical notions of giving reinforce the very hierarchies of power they are designed to alleviate.…”