Why Do Scandals Sell?
People love reading about others’ mistakes. Celebrities get ambushed by paparazzi waiting for them to do something scandalous and, most of the time, these “wrong-doings” are simple mistakes that everyone makes.
First, what defines a scandal? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is “an action or event that causes a public feeling of shock and strong moral disapproval”. It can be political, financial, religious, sexual, you name it. What types of scandal sell differs around the world, depending on the social norms and culture. In religious and conservative countries, abortion might be a hot and infuriating topic, while other cultures might find cheating to be much more scandalous. There are, of course, universal taboos, such as incest and murder. However, in this article, I will focus more on light-hearted scandals — ones we read about in gossip-news.
You tell me which article you would rather read: “New pictures released of Kim Kardashian with new boyfriend, just weeks after her split with the last one!”, or “Kim Kardashian says she is ‘happier than ever’ single, taking a break from men.” I am going to assume the first one is a bit more compelling (if not, this article is really pointless).
As Laura Kipnis put it in an interview with Zocalo, “Scandals involving love and betrayal I find particularly compelling, I admit – they’re the closest to home, right?”. It makes us, “normal” people, feel better seeing celebrities making the same mistakes as we do. Laura also states “… the temptation and pleasure of moralizing about other people’s transgressions lets us off the hook for transgressions we’ve committed or may be contemplating committing.” In a way, celebrities making mistakes can justify normal people doing the same thing – it makes actions such as cheating or making questionable fashion choices socially acceptable. Whether this is a positive change or not depends on what the action in question is. Making cheating socially acceptable might not be a very good thing, but normalizing not always dressing your best is very-much needed.
Although the attraction to reading scandalous articles can be seen as simply natural, I would argue that there is something wrong with it. Celebrities making the smallest of mistakes gets the whole world hating them and might even cost them their career. A regular person making the exact same mistake might not face any consequences at all, and maybe what they did will never be uncovered in the first place. Whether the behavior can be justified or not depends on how you view celebrities – are they normal human beings just like us or have they committed their entire lives to being circus animals constantly being perceived and criticized by everyone?
Is it really fair? You tell me.
References:
“Meaning of Scandal in English.” Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. Accessed November 20, 2022. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scandal.
Allern, Sigurd, and Christian von Sikorski. “Political Scandals as a Democratic Challenge: From Important Revelations to Provocations, Trivialities, and Neglect - Introduction.” International Journal of Communication. USC Annenberg, 2018. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7094/2413.
“Why Do We Love Scandals?” Zócalo Public Square. ASU Media Enterprise, September 12, 2010. https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2010/09/12/why-do-we-love-scandals/crime/.