It has been less than a week since Halyna Hutchins died on the set of the movie “Rust.” Hutchins, originally from Ukraine, was the movie’s director of photography and was named one of American Cinematographers’ Rising Stars of 2019. The discharge of a prop gun on Oct. 21, used in a scene by actor Alec Baldwin, killed Hutchins.
The incident that led to Hutchins’ death also injured director Joel Souza, who was released from the hospital last Friday. Hutchins was flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, survived by her husband and young son. An investigation found there was a live round found in the prop gun.
Hutchins’s death is a tragedy. But to add salt to an unfixable wound, since the news broke, the media has been continuously highlighting Alec Baldwin’s part in the incident instead of Hutchins’ life and accomplishments. The first headline I saw was on Instagram, from The New York Times account. The post read, “Alec Baldwin Fatally Shoots Crew Member With Prop Firearm, Authorities Say.” It wasn’t until the next day that the Times posted a photo of Haylna Hutchins and described her life.
This terrible accident has become another example of the media focusing only on what they think will get readers: celebrities. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Look at the helicopter accident that killed Kobe Bryant and his daughter. In addition to Bryant and his daughter, seven people died horribly on that day, but the name highlighted across news outlets was Kobe Bryant.
And sure, maybe it makes some sense that celebrity names are the ones that make it in news headlines, but when tragedy strikes, doesn’t every person deserve that same caliber of importance? Why have we made being a celebrity the bar for whether or not something is newsworthy?
In my opinion, we live in what can easily be called the age of celebrity obsession. Yes, celebrities have always existed one way or another, but they now can interject themselves in our daily lives with social media. So, we consume celebrity news like its air.
Critics such as Amanda Hess have said the COVID-19 lockdowns were supposed to end the obsession with celebrities. In her piece in The New York Times, “Celebrity Culture is Burning,” Hess writes that the pandemic stopped letting celebrities pretend like they were just like us. While cramped in houses with our entire family, celebrities acted like life in their huge poolside properties during lockdown was so hard.
Hess writes that celebrities usually get praised for using their platforms, but during the pandemic, “our awareness has never been so easy to rouse and misuse. Celebrities have a captive audience of traumatized people who are glued to the internet, eyes darting toward trending topics for clues to processing the unimaginable horrors looming just outside, and instead are finding Madonna bathing in a rose petal-strewn bath.”
Hess’s prediction doesn’t seem to be the case. Though we may have believed we were past celebrity obsession, the framing of this tragic incident proves celebrities still unhealthily captivate our attention at the cost of acknowledgement of other people’s narratives.
Pop culture still has its grip on society, considering even my journalism professor knew that Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker were engaged. So, if the news still thinks that covering every bit of celebrity life is essential, then that must say a lot about what people are reading.
Now that we understand society’s celebrity obsession, it makes sense that Alec Baldwin’s name was plastered on headlines. If it weren’t for him, the news likely wouldn’t have spread as quickly as it did. The Associated Press reported in 2016 that 43 people had died on the sets of movies since 1990, but since these people usually work in the background, their deaths didn’t make it in news headlines.
So, what do we do about this? It becomes more a question of moral dilemma than actually taking any actions. The media will continue to report on what the people will read, so as long as we continue putting celebrities on a pedestal, people like Haylna will only be the subheadline.
This article isn’t about dismantling society’s love of celebrities. I am a victim to pop culture’s grasp too. This article’s purpose is to put the problem into perspective — ask yourself why Alec Baldwin deserved more media attention than Halyna Hutchins. Hutchins’s death as a result of mismanagement should be news enough and, hopefully, we can all agree with that, if not now, then soon.
