The American Music Awards (AMAs) has never been short of controversy. In 2009 its public voting system was criticised for posthumously nominating Michael Jackson for awards such as Artist of the Year \u2014\u00a0it also received complaints concerning Adam Lambert\u2019s \u2018racy\u2019 performance at the ceremony.<\/p>\n
This year was no different. This time it was one of the hosts, Gigi Hadid, who drew unwanted attention. It was to be expected that a joke about President-elect Donald Trump was going to be made, given his momentous victory over Hillary Clinton earlier in November, and the plethora of material he has handed to the media to satirise.<\/p>\n
Gigi Hadid\u2019s impression of Melania Trump at the awards ceremony on Sunday highlighted a few things, and there are many questions that could be debated: was it racist? Should she have had to apologise?<\/em> The stunt involved her imitating Melania\u2019s facial expressions and Slovenian accent, and saying “I love my husband, President Barack Obama,” playing on Melania\u2019s plagiarising of Michelle Obama\u2019s speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. In that case, the lack of foresight of both Melania and her speechwriter was dumbfounding, particularly in an internet age where nothing can be fully erased or forgotten.<\/p>\n Regarding Hadid’s impression, initially, I felt that it was an unnecessarily personal and spiteful attack on someone who has remained relatively removed from the political sphere.\u00a0Reflecting on my initial thoughts about the incident, though, it seems clear that she should not have felt compelled to apologise. The impression was based on something Melania had done, and was rightly criticised for. While imitating her facial expression seemed particularly spiteful, and did not add any humour to the segment, double standards of the ‘acceptability’ of mocking others must not be tolerated.<\/p>\n To me, this event illuminated something about the way in which people engaged with the US election and Donald Trump. The process exposed the prominence of \u2018virtue signalling\u2019 in our society. Virtue signalling, a phrase coined by author James Bartholomew, is defined by Mark Judge in an article for Acculturated<\/em> as, “the popular modern habit of indicating that one has virtue merely by expressing disgust or favor for certain political ideas, cultural happenings, or even the weather”.<\/p>\n I noticed that throughout the UK\u2019s European Union referendum campaign, and more acutely during the US presidential election campaign, a competition arose to see who could denounce certain ideas the most. This was particularly the case on social media, irrespective of whether claims were backed up with evidence.<\/p>\n Political discussion and debate on social media platforms have too often become what Bartholomew notes as “indicating” that you share “the right, approved, liberal media-elite opinions” and that you are of a “kind, decent, and virtuous” sort . In no way did I support Trump in the election \u2014 I found the election to be demoralising. It seemed, however, that \u00a0any allegiance to Trump was deemed completely unacceptable and unfathomable \u2014\u00a0any and every supporter was immediately branded a racist, ignorant bigot. This labelling does not encourage the challenging debate that is so needed in the current political climate \u2014 this is a whole other discussion to be had.<\/p>\n The link between Gigi Hadid\u2019s impression and virtue signalling may not be immediately clear. However, for me, it drew into focus the ‘group think’ mentality that goes hand-in-hand with virtue signalling. It highlighted the connection between celebrity culture and politics, and how this perpetuated the sense of ‘moral superiority’ that Ben Shapiro talks of \u2014 which undoubtedly contributed to Trump\u2019s victory. The very overt presentation of morality and decency portrayed by celebrities and others reflects how most of the time it is for their personal ‘aggrandisement’ \u2014\u00a0for an ego-trip. People are able to place themselves in the camp of virtue and “enjoy a sense of community” and “feel confirmed” in their viewpoint. All of this has been exasperated by celebrity culture and liberal mainstream media.<\/p>\n Some people I spoke to about Trump knew as much as possible about his policy aims. However, the majority seemed to rely upon vague popular discourse and lacked concrete backing to their arguments against him. This is one reason why \u2018virtue signalling\u2019 became so prevalent during his campaign, it seemed as though it was a fight for who could shout the loudest in denouncement of him.<\/p>\n There is plenty to say in attempting to reason with\u00a0Trump’s victory, though it is not the focus of this article. Last Sunday\u2019s incident, however, highlighted a growing problem in society. There is too much concern with appearing in a certain way and conforming to\u00a0the \u201cright\u201d way of thinking. It is exactly this \u201cgroup think\u201d and fear of diverging from popular rhetoric that lets someone like Trump gain traction and build support. Instead of concentrating on solutions, we are stuck in denouncing him and failing to fully address the issues behind his discourse. It also brings in the focus the American public’s rejection of the intertwining \u00a0of celebrity culture with political strategy, despite Hillary Clinton\u2019s best efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Romy Biscoe uses the controversy at the AMAs as a window to explore the modern phenomenon of ‘virtue signalling’ and its role in the US election<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[14896,973,14782,14897,385,7056,5392,14555,14898],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18975"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}