Since the beginning of time, humans have created the ideal person and named this person a hero. A hero can be defined as a moral person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. The most notable heroes come from Greek mythology with Hercules, Achilles, Perseus and many more.
The Greeks loved to romanticize and create stories about these heroes like Hercules and the Twelve Labors. In the Twelve Labors, Hercules had to endure slay monsters and solve impossible tasks. Identifying a hero is one of the most subjective things a person can do because everyone’s opinion varies. The focus of the types of celebrities are rappers, musicians, personalities, and actors. For each hero, there are pros and cons to why they should be considered heroes. A celebrity can be a hero through motivation, great achievements, and noble qualities.
Celebrities today are idealized by their fans and usually have outstanding achievements but with these achievements the important parts are motivation. There are many celebrities that support and create their own charities such as Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Research, Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, The Children’s Health Fund and many more celebrity charities.
There are many celebrities that do a lot of good for society and really show that they are kind people. A very important factor for these donations and foundations is why these celebrities donate to them. There are morally good reasons why these people would donate to charities and a bad reason why these people would donate money. Let’s start with the good reasons.
If a celebrity truly cares about the donation like an obvious example would be Michael J. fox donating to Parkinson’s Research because he is a victim of Parkinson’s and is affected by it every day. If a celebrity wants to be a hero and wants to personally help whoever they can then, by all means, they should and these people can be considered heroes.
The wrong reasons for why these people donate money usually deals with the vice of pride. Pride is when a person cares too much about themselves and becomes too self-indulgent. A celebrity such as Chris Brown might donate $100,000 to the donation fund of Hurricane Harvey but the question is why he would do this? Chris Brown as a person has made morally bad choices such as hitting a woman.
The problem arises to why to he would donate such a large amount of money. The darker reason is to make himself look good to the public. His career depends on selling albums. If people continue to think that he is a bad person then they will not buy his albums. To clear his image, he would donate just to look good for his fans and in reality, he could not even care about the charity. In this case, this celebrity should not be considered a hero because of malice intent.
There is a big difference between being a good person rather than looking good. Publicity and their public image are false because what we see on the internet, television., and on their pages is usually what the celebrity wants you to see. It’s like reading propaganda. The reader has to read the article with a grain of salt because most likely that is not how they act on a day to day basis. They promote themselves and create these lies so the public will look upon them fondly. In reality, the population has no clue what these people do behind closed doors and their real lives. These types of celebrities should not be branded heroes.
Probably the most subjective part about celebrities is how great their achievements are. Most celebrities make their way into the entertainment industry which focuses on putting a performance into the mainstream, receiving praise, and then making money from the common person.
To be a celebrity now means that in a shape or form that have received great commercial success in their selected field. Should the common person praise these people and put them on a pedestal? The quick answer is no because these people are not truly bettering society with these achievements. These achievements are not heroic because they do not save lives, help the poor, protect others, or make life better. Actors only stand in front of the camera and say lines that are given to them. Musicians write lyrics, make music, and go into a booth.
Personalities go in front of a camera and talk about their ideas. At face value, these people do pretty basic things without directly making things better. The only difference between them and a normal person is they get paid a lot of money to do it. All of their success comes down to is making tons of money which really is not that amazing. The achievements that these celebrities again typically are not moral or have a positive impact on society.
In some cases, they are immoral. Rappers are the worst of the worst when it comes to moral stature. Rappers have simplified their craft into rapping about women, money, and drugs.
They bolster and praise themselves with these vices. These people are good at what they do but do not deserve the label of hero. Celebrities create norms in society, and rappers push for this form of lifestyle. Drugs are shown to lead people to jail and into bad situations.
Their music is out there for everyone, and kids can get it easily. It may not be apparent but kids look up to these bad influences because they do not know any better. Their influence on kids corrupts them at young ages and is one of the factors to why they choose drugs and why the kids can justify their path. Celebrity endorsements are a big part of marketing today because if a kid sees their favorite football player eat Reese Cups then they’ll want Reese Cups.
It’s the same mentality with drugs, and marketers conduct research to prove it. Their second vice is greed. They flaunt money around and idolize it. This influences people to act as if money is the only thing in the world which leads to poor life choices and bad outcomes. In most religions, they speak out against greed and claim how terrible it is. Their third vice is lust. Many rappers disgustingly boast about how many women they get.
They promote misogyny, sexist ideas, objectification of women, and violence against women. In most songs, women are referred to in a derogatory fashion constantly. In videos and songs, they basically are objects to make the rapper look better. They perpetuate the hate against women and their objectification. Many rising celebrities in this genre such as Kodak Black, Xxxtentacion, and Famous Dex have legal charges against them for assault against women. Their achievements are based on the wrongs of society. Morally this group of people show very low morals and cannot be considered heroes through their actions.
There are celebrities that do not feed the wrong of societies quite like rappers but they do very little to better society through their craft. Actors read their lines which they are truly talented with that but they do not help others through those lines. They only provide entertainment for others to laugh at or enjoy.
Directors and writers put a film together so that it can be watched by millions but through that, they are not heroes. They only provide a product for the consumer to purchase. Celebrities at the maximum in society should not be considered heroes. The actions and environment of celebrities do not justify them to be heroes. On average, they commit more wrongs than they do better society.
Most of their talents do not directly benefit society and some of their good actions can be traced back to arrogance. Some celebrities promote the wrongs of society and perpetuate the problems with youth. Overall, many of them lack moral motivations. Their noble qualities end at their wealth. Finally, their great achievements mainly deal with amassing large amounts of money. Celebrities are not heroes due to their motivations, qualities, actions, and achievements. The pedestal that they stand on should be lowered to the same height as the common man.
