Is negative PR positive? Or more importantly, is it illegal to sell your own placenta?

.

Whichever career a celebrity is striving for, PR plays a vital role in achieving the aforementioned status. As is likely to continue, there has been an upsurge of controversial female characters within the media. The emphasis here being on the term ‘character’ because that’s exactly what they are – constructed personas.

In 2006 a woman by the name of Katie Hopkins made it to our screens and, whether we appreciated it or not, infiltrated our living rooms as part of a programme titled The Apprentice. She caused a lot of issues within the show as she happily made many offensive and derogatory comments to fellow contestants about themselves as well as the general public. Despite this she reached the penultimate episode where she promptly withdrew herself from the competition for childcare reasons. It was a peculiar occurrence and many speculations about her decision was made around this time. While all this negative press caused her to lose her job (that let her take unpaid leave to join the programme) and reportedly affected her family, she began to capitalise on her dislike by selling her story to a major newspaper as well as magazine company. From here her, for want of a better word, fame took off.

No doubt she caused controversy in 2007’s I’m a Celebrity… Get me Out of Here but 2013 showed her really pulling out all the stops, beginning with her more well-known discussion that took place on her ITV’s This Morning appearance. To surmise this and the subsequent year of her career she made: class-ism remarks (in regards to children’s names), criticism of obesity, ‘badly-timed’ (arguably intentional) tweets about Glasgow, commenting on trade union leader Bob Crow shortly after his death and describing Palestinians (after two Israelis were killed) as “filthy rodents”. That is just a few of the many controversies Hopkins caused, a list that is unfortunately not exhaustive.

Now, like the majority of people hearing these things being said, most would think her comments 100% genuine and that she is a terrible human being. However, possibly as controversial as her comments – some don’t think this at all. Broadcaster Terry Christian who, opposing Hopkins on Channel 5’s The Big Benefits Row: Live (February 2014), accused her of only expressing her controversial opinions in order to make money from all the media attention. She is now starring in her full controversial glory in Big Brother 2015.

Katie Hopkins and what she says is like watching EastEnders – the nasty characters always make for better viewing. Her simulacra has been carefully and meticulously constructed to a point where the majority of the public believe her to be genuine. Similarly and more recently is ‘Britain’s most hated woman’ (and subsequent model), Josie Cunningham. In 2013 she spoke to The Sun newspaper boasting that back in 2009 she acquired breast augmentation surgery on the NHS.

What is amazing is how overt she is about the game she is playing yet is still capitalising and making substantial profit from her controversy – quoted in an interview saying ‘I won’t be hated for free – I’m not naive’ (BBC Newsbeat). January 2015 has seen a documentary debuted about her that has created even more backlash for her within the media – particularly on social media. ‘Her agent, Rob Cooper, claims they usually charge “no less than a four figure sum” for access to her because they have a lot of overheads – including security’ (BBC Newsbeat). Taking into account the amount of interviews she’s sold inclusive of a documentary, Cunningham must be worth a lot more than she was before informing the nation of her NHS implants. Clearly this was a brilliant PR move as it is still very much paying off. She could even join Hopkin’s and follow in her footsteps (in more ways than one) as there are rumours of Cunningham going into the Big Brother house. She has of course since caused more backlash by announcing she would have had an abortion if it allowed her in the Truman Show-esque house.

Within this documentary, her PR agent Cooper made it overtly clear they were making PR decisions to intentionally cause offensive. He and Cunningham were devious in their Tweets including one about selling her placenta after birth – they even deliberately planted a grammatical error so more people would respond with even more reason to insult. Of course all marketing of a celebrity is premediated, but this seems even more calculated than usual. But who’s to say it is? What is to say that making a living by playing the media at its own game is immoral? Living in a media landscape where many advertisements legally have to remind us it is in fact an advertisement (typically with the use of questionably miniscule asterisks), maybe we are so beyond overt falsification that new techniques has led it to become covert.

It all also begs the question of equality, as no male celebrity has received this level of ‘witch-hunt where we all get together and burn’ him. ‘It’s what we have been doing in civilisation since we have had’ ‘this cultural figure of the hated woman’ (The Telegraph) and with how influential media is, it is stunting any kind of progression on gender equality. Remember the ‘Burn Book’ in the chick flick Mean Girls? Think of that but on a broader scale – the similarities are all there.

Bibliography

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30928875

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/josie-the-most-hated-woman-in-britain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11366024/Josie-Cunningham-and-Katie-Hopkins-hatred-is-bad-for-you.-Stop-it.html