Hear Me Out: Influencers and singers shouldn’t be in the movies
These days, it seems as though just about anyone can star in a movie, as long as they have millions of followers and absolutely no experience with the craft. The days of considered choices and meticulous auditioning processes are seemingly over, with some casting directors lazily selecting anyone with clout or current success on social media, capitalising on fleeting trends instead of choosing actors with relevant talent and experience. We can see this through the rise of Charli XCX, with the singer soon to be dominating our screens with announcements of collaborations with fabled auteurs like Gregg Araki and Takashi Miike, despite just having one (very painful) acting credit to her name.
However, this shouldn’t be entirely surprising, as being creatively talented in one area does not guarantee success in another. Just because someone can write, does not mean they can pick up a trumpet and toot out a tune. So why do casting directors seem to think that creativity is a transferable skill? Have we lost respect for the art of acting?
The world is now swept up in the trends and lore of online culture, with people suddenly becoming obsessed with internet stars who film themselves mouthing the words to pop songs and vloggers who film their everyday lives. In this, Addison Rae and Emma Chamberlain have become internet royalty, with both branching out into different creative avenues and expanding their image after reaching the height of their careers as influencers.
Rae will soon be releasing an album, with very calculated moves being made by her marketing team to rebrand her image as a popstar, presumably to preserve her spotlight, given that TikTok isn’t quite ‘cool’ enough anymore. Every aspect of her social media presence feels as though it was carefully planned and controlled, seemingly trying to change how she is perceived to increase the longevity of her fame, even if it shows how blatantly inauthentic and manipulated the move is.
Chamberlain has recently been cast in her first feature film, despite her persistent proclamation on YouTube that she isn’t really that interested in movies and struggles to sit through them, with two exceptions being the stop-motion feature Coraline and Napoleon Dynamite. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with not being into movies, but when the film industry is already in a crisis and emerging talent is now a thing of the past, why are we so intent on awarding the sparse opportunities that exist to people with no genuine passion for the medium?
While Chamberlain is an undeniably creative and fascinating character, something that has led her to amassing an audience of over ten million people since her first video at 16 years old, it is slightly infuriating to see this repeated trend of acting opportunities being being handed out like candy, with casting directors choosing actors based on who has the largest current audience and who will attract more bums to seats. The same thing goes for Charli XCX. She might be one of the most popular artists currently, but I can’t imagine why this would make her a top contender to play the White Witch in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia, especially considering this role was previously fulfilled by an acting titan like Tilda Swinton.
It seems as though fame is the only requisite within the current casting model, with all areas of the arts being conflated so that there is no area of speciality. This is a dangerous place to be, leading us to lose sight of the genuine talent that is required in each creative discipline and our respect for the arts in general, believing that one is naturally linked to the other. Nobody nurtures this attitude towards non-creative subjects; an accountant would hardly be tasked with performing heart surgery just because they both use the left side of their brain for their occupation.
Perhaps the act of lumping all creative crafts in one reductive bracket is reflective of our obsession with fame and the desire to maintain it. People are rebranding themselves for fear of losing relevance in their original field and deciding to try something completely different (with the only commonality being fame). If you are losing steam in your career as an influencer, it would be seen as a step down to pursue a job as a pharmacist. And thus, the only option is to pick another field in which you retain an audience, leading many to pursue careers in music or showbiz and having the advantage of already being famous to give them a quick leg-up on the greasy pole.
Is there a flip side to this?
While this model has occasionally worked in the past, with Zendaya proving herself to be a triple threat in the industry as both a talented singer, dancer and actor, the likes of Selena Gomez only make the art form seem like a joke, with her recent exploits in the disastrous Emilia Perez making a mockery of the medium as she tries to rebrand herself as a ‘serious actor’. This phenomenon has now become a gateway for terrible films to be made as people with no prior knowledge of cinema try to justify truly awful choices. Anyone else with a genuine love for film would take one look at that script and know that it is not something that deserves to see the light of day.
It has never been harder to make it as an artist from relative obscurity, with an incredibly high disparity between those with pre-existing connections and wealth, which makes it borderline impossible for any emerging actors to make it in Hollywood. It seems as though every new project being released has the same cast of A-list actors and predictable choices that will practically guarantee box office success, with the art of casting becoming a dying trade—studio executives/producers simply choosing from a list of trending people on social media. Aspiring actors are rarely given opportunities to break into the industry, with open casting calls slowly dwindling, only raising the elitism at the heart of these creative industries.
There are people out there who love movies with every fibre of their being, and would gladly trade their soul or first-born child for the opportunity to be cast in any kind of project; people who have dreamt about being on the big screen their entire lives and have been working for years to perfect their craft. But the Hollywood dream is now one that is born and killed in the same breath, while for others, it is a vague idea that is pushed to its limits, enabling them to steal something that is already so scarce from those who truly yearn for it.
