By Delaney Newhouse | Focus Editor
The appeal of celebrity is undeniable.
There are few things we love more than an American success story — someone plucked from obscurity, polished to a shine and thrust into the spotlight.
One of the few things that beats that, though? A downfall.
Out of nowhere, the public watches as the pedestals on which we place our favorites begin to crumble. Nothing is quite so entertaining as watching our favorite stars go down in flames.
Or, in this case, watching their houses go down in flames.
The Palisades Fire unlocked reactions filled with a gruesome fascination reminiscent of true crime or tornado junkies. It’s shockingly easy to dehumanize the wealthy celebrities whose houses burned down, especially given how celebrity culture encourages fans to see these people less as people and more as fictional characters on which to project our speculations and desires.
Not to mention (yet again) that these people are rich. They have insurance and multiple estates. They’ll be fine, right?
There’s even a sense of schadenfreude — delight in others’ misery — to be found in learning that the millionaires who encourage tax breaks for oil companies are losing their homes after ignoring the increasingly delicate climate and even building in traditional burn areas. The fire was, in so many ways, an inevitable consequence of their actions.
I can’t blame people for feeling this way. It’s only natural. I, too, struggle to feel empathy for Paris Hilton and Jamie Lee Curtis.
I can, however, blame the media for giving the impression that Paris Hilton, Jamie Lee Curtis and their ilk are the only victims of the fires that engulfed the Los Angeles area.
And I’m not talking about other millionaires, here. While the Palisades Fire received untold amounts of coverage, often filled with live updates recounting the statuses of everyone’s favorite celebrities, the concurrent Eaton Fire, though it burned 7,000 structures to the Palisades’ 5,000 burned, received comparatively little.
There were no celebrities affected by the Eaton fire, though. It burned in less wealthy areas of Los Angeles County, further inland.
Even working-class Palisades residents — ranging from housekeepers to engineers — have been virtually ignored in favor of a slew of content regarding celebrities. Unlike the celebrities, these people were already being priced out of their homes, and will not likely be able to return, especially as landlords use this opportunity to raise rents for the desperate, newly displaced.
No celebrities died in these fires. It was older people, people with disabilities and people dealing with poverty. They weren’t attractive or flashy or well-known.
But a celebrity’s name attracts attention, and the abundance of information available about them makes for easy reporting. We already know Paris Hilton has dogs, after all, so there’s no need to call her up and ask if she does.
It’s incredibly difficult to understand the enormity of an event through the lens of the elite. They don’t have to worry about where they’ll sleep next week, next month or next year.
Preaching about the catastrophic horror of the L.A. fires while using the uber-wealthy as their mascots is lazy. It misrepresents the situation as a mere annoyance, even as we are told that it is important.
Beneath the glossy veneer of Hollywood studios, L.A. at its core is full of vibrant, diverse working-class communities. These people have made their homes — their only homes — there, and they deserve our empathy and our help, not gloating and resentment.
So many victims of these fires lost everything, and the ripple effect they will have on society is yet to really unfold. A new class of desperate renters willing to pay gouged prices will mean a new class of former renters left houseless in a city that criminalizes homelessness.
Even now, in the smoke-filled streets, police continue frequent raids of Skid Row and other encampments. Libraries and community centers have burned. There’s nowhere to take shelter.
Despite the helpless fascination we often feel in these situations, there are things we can do. College students may struggle with the idea of donating significant amounts of limited funds to mutual aid or GoFundMes, but we can ensure that we truly understand what’s going on.
More than that, we can demand honest, accurate coverage of not just this but all significant events. We can organize and vote for people and policies that work to prevent disasters like this from occurring again — and that respond with preparedness when they inevitably do.
This isn’t a celebrity story. These aren’t characters hurt in an action film. Real people died, and that shouldn’t have happened.
