'We don't just want to hear Ed Sheeran sing and play guitar, we want to know his politics'

'We don't just want to hear Ed Sheeran sing and play guitar, we want to know his politics' To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Issued on: François Picard is pleased to welcome Ellis Cashmore, sociologist, professor and author of "Celebrity Culture". Cashmore argues that contemporary celebrity culture has fundamentally altered the relationship between entertainment and politics. There was a time when public figures retained the option of political neutrality. Whereas, today, even silence or refusal to engage can be interpreted as a political act. He traces this shift historically, from the explicitly political counterculture of the 1960s, through an era in which commercially minded stars could distance themselves from contentious issues, to the social-media age, where audiences increasingly expect access not only to celebrities’ performances and private lives, but also to their political convictions. Movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter accelerated this transformation by making public expressions of solidarity increasingly normative across entertainment and sport. On issues such as racism or equal rights, celebrities and institutions could often present themselves as speaking with one voice. Wars and deeply contested geopolitical conflicts offer no comparable consensus. Yet the expectation to take a position remains. The result, Cashmore suggests, is a celebrity culture, and a veritable minefield, in which speaking, taking a stand, or remaining silent, all carry political consequences,