Another Privileged Person Going Public About Dealing With Things™

Affluent, famous and/or otherwise privileged folks need you to know they are Real People™ too, even if you already knew. They are just like us... except when they're not.

This week I planned on publishing the next instalment of my Substack series ‘Reasons modern-day work life depresses me’, but then this popped up in my Twitter timeline:

…so I went all out on it in a 16-tweet Twitter thread (because I am currently both unable and refusing to pay $8/month to enable 10K-character tweets).

Further below is an extended but edited* version of said thread. (*edited, because of course there were typos and other errors to correct, and as always I feel the need to further elaborate…)

Firstly: If we haven’t met yet: Hi, I am Jo, also known as Jojo, and I am old enough to have lived through (and recovered from) a number of things, including but not limited to chronic illness, addiction, and an eating disorder, while still working my way through recurring mental health issues such as depression and anxiety (and often writing about it.)

Secondly: If you do not wish to click on the above screenshot to read the tweet, and then click on the linked Guardian article, let me summarise: Mental Health Awareness Week 2023 runs from 15 to 21 May, and as part of that, the BBC is set to air a documentary called Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction and the Guardian article is part of the usual media coverage reserved for (Fairly) Famous People Who Have Something To Promote™.

Thirdly: If you want to respond, here or on Twitter or elsewhere, please don’t go after the person whose tweet inspired my subsequent Twitter thread and this Substack post, as they merely posted and quoted the article, without given so much as an opinion. Please don’t give them any grief. Thank you.

Another day, another famous face with good intentions

Please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people with good intentions, life’s just turned me into a cynical old bag who’s witnessed too many times how good intentions tend to pave pathways to hell, rather than do anything meaningful.

In the UK’s media landscape, good intentions tend to be shown by earnest faces of (fairly) well-known people with sincerely good intentions. People who may make efforts to look beyond their own situation, possibly even acknowledge any privilege they may have, but whose initiatives still fall flat beyond serving their own interests.

We’ve already had campaigns featuring (former) royals and other celebrities making themselves sound relatable to audiences at large by speaking of their mental health and other personal struggles, but effectively changing little more than letting us know that they are human, too. Even if impressive amounts of money end up getting raised and spent on the purpose(s) they claim to serve, those amounts barely scratch the surface of the actual issue(s) at hand and mostly serve to boost the celebrity patrons’ personal brands.

And the reason it boosts well-known or otherwise privileged people profiles is that, for all their real humanness, they are, in fact, not quite like most of us. It’s a privilege most of us humans are not afforded, as I will explain a bit more below.

Matt Willis’s documentary is just another iteration of an established formula: A “raw and honest” acount – literally quoting the original press release here! – that may acknowledge or even feature people less fortunate than Matt Willis, but will mostly serve to put Matt Willis in a favourable light.

Now then, let’s move to the Guardian interview with Matt about this:

“We have so much stigma around addiction that we forget that it’s a person and that this person is loved by people. The ripple effect is huge.”

Whose stigma? What is yet another (at least in part) publicly-funded documentary about a famous person with addiction and other mental health issues, someone with the wealth to access private (mental) health care when needed (and possibly earning back at least some of the cost of that on the back of a documentary) going to do? Enough has been published about the ripple effect of one person’s addiction, so exactly who is helped by doing little (if anything) more than pointing this out yet again?

I suppose it lessens the stigma about talking about it, but if your name is Matt and you work an average or below-average white/blue-collar job where you decide to open up about your addiction or your mental health struggles, doing so may get you sympathetic nods from peers and superiors—but probably little else.

If you are a regular Matt in a bog standard job, you may be lucky to be given a link or leaflet to the employer's Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that you are likely to contact because at least it will get quicker access to care or support than you can get on the NHS, but you may never get to finish the care path they recommend, because the next time your contract is up for renewal, it will likely not be renewed, because for all your candid talk of your addiction and/or mental health struggles, you have now (internally) been labelled a liability to the brand/organisation (though never on the record or to your face, of course). And when you lose your job, you lose the support from any EAP that came it.

Even in the most fortunate case that regular Matt in a bog standard job is on a permanent contract with no renewal date in sight, the next round(s) of layoffs to be made will likely include liability Matt. And if there aren’t any layoffs on the cards anytime soon, Matt for sure will be passed over for any opportunity of an internal move or promotion, leaving Matt to work to hold on to the job because of little/nothing more than its pay and benefits (such as the aforementioned EAP), until he finds a more welcoming workplace elsewhere, to the relief of his present employer.

And that’s just what happens to a regular Matt in regular (relatively secure) employment (when compared to a more famous, more affluent Matt). Let’s not even start about the unluckier of Matts: the one who relies on temp or gig work on median or low pay without non-monetary benefits, or the one whose addiction and/or mental health issues cause him to struggle so much, he can barely work or cannot work at all, all while being unable to access any kind of health care or support to help him recover somewhat.

And I get why broadcasters and production companies would rather not make documentaries about regular Matts, because they have a track record of being particularly awful at it, seemingly because they consistently seem to have trouble relating to regular folks enough to afford them the same dignity** afforded to famous folks in documentaries. (**or executive influence/editorial control, or pay, for that matter...)

Are documentaries, books, podcasts, charities, campaigns et cetera featuring (relatively) famous and/or wealthy people’s struggles bad? No, I don't think so. They get people talking, always. But I don't know if they reduce existing stigmas towards less-fortunate people when every initiative in essence does the same thing over and over again: centre sympathetically around someone already well-known and already (or at least previously) well-liked.

To me, all these publications and initiatives, however well-meaning, appear to have no more of an effect on the issue(s) they claim to care about than trickle-down economics has on greater-societal wealth and wellbeing, in that they mostly seem to help people already at or relatively near the top, who face real-life human struggles like the rest of us, but even then tend to be in a position of (relative) privilege when facing their struggles and accessing care, even being enabled to monetise their – again, very real! – struggles, recouping (some of) the costs of their recovery, and benefiting their public image.

Less fortunate folks barely get such opportunities, and even if they find prospects remotely close, they tend to constitute a level of exploitation. Because people who do not come from a position of (former) fame or (former) affluence/wealth, don’t hold any power to leverage or bargain for a level of editorial control over how they are going be portrayed. Their only options are to either submit to some level of exploitation in exchange for the care or exposure they seek, or to walk away and suffer on.

Time and again I see famous people featuring in media exposés and other initiatives posited to do good, yet almost each and every such occasion I fail to see how (beyond admiration and a general absence of probing questions) they translate into real-life benefits for everyone else—besides entertainment value for the masses and perhaps a few understanding nods should you bring up your own similar experiences with people who watched/heard/read the candid celebrity’s story.

However sincere, I'm kind of done with yet another famous face being all earnest in wanting to show themselves a real person (we already know), “raise awareness,” “crush taboos,” or “reduce stigmas,” or whatever cliché they throw out there when promoting their latest product (because essentially that’s what it is). We should be beyond that now. I really wish we were.

One thing that became clear to Willis while making the film is how underfunded addiction treatment is. (…) Willis knows he is lucky to be able to afford expensive rehab centres and therapists. “I was speaking to a guy recently and he was on a two-and-a-half-year waiting list. When someone has a problem with addiction, the time to act is now. There are so many amazing charities and people doing incredible things, but they’re not government-funded. Every rehab we went to, you’re talking £7,000 – like, who has that?”

“Who has that?” Well, Matt Willis does. As does almost*** every other celebrity giving a “raw and honest account of [their] battle with addiction in [a] documentary” – yes, literally quoting that official press release again – that will benefit them in one or more ways. And I respect when someone acknowledges their relative luck or privilege, and appreciate that many more people will not have it, but how exactly does this mere mention/acknowledgement/appreciation help anyone else? (***as with everything, there will be exceptions…)

Willis has dreams of opening a rehab centre available to all, regardless of their ability to pay (…) The documentary was meant to open conversations and change stigmas, but without anyone funding anything, it’s going to be impossible to do more.”

As much as I share the dream of rehab centres, and more – such as adequate (mental) health care – available to all, regardless of their ability to pay (you know, like the National Health Service was meant to be…) how exactly does yet another (on this occasion part-publicly-funded BBC) documentary help towards that?

Personally, for reasons explained at length above, I cherish no hope whatsoever that new or better conversations are going to be had or that stigmas will be “changed” for the better of most people rather than just the protagonist(s) of yet another documentary.

…Yet funding was found for yet another documentary featuring yet another (relatively) famous person’s personal angle on their mental health struggles and/or their “battle with addiction” – once again literally quoting that official press release – except, while the press release bills it as “a one-off documentary” it is only a one-off for them, not for everyone else.

Is Mat Willis’s BBC documentary really going to do anything more or better than, say, the BBC’s documentary about Sheridan Smith’s “past struggles with addiction” or the BBC’s documentary about Paul Gascoigne’s life “blighted by mental health struggles and health addiction” did? (And that’s me just referencing the most recent such documentaries featured on the publicly-funded Beeb; Pete Doherty has got his own documentary coming, apparently, and the internet is overloaded with stories of celebrities opening up about their addictions and/or other mental health related struggles, yet despite all that conversation-starting, awareness-creating, stigma-crushing, taboo-busting candor from so many famous folks, appropriate mental health care still isn’t available to any Brit who cannot afford private care.)

TL,DR; I am not interested in yet Another Privileged Person Going Public About Dealing With Things™, for reasons given

As much as I appreciate that if you were to show the reality of every-day people’s addiction or other mental health struggles, it would probably be too unpalatable for a mass audience (and potentially worsen existing stigmas), this (mostly post-recovery) celebrity-washing of difficult and often ugly subject matter is neither good enough nor doing enough good.

On a personal note, I genuinely wish Matt Willis all the best; I understand from the interview that he has managed to stay on the wagon for about five years now and that he’s going back on tour with Busted later this year. Good luck to him (and yes, I’ll give him a plug, too—which probably does as much for him as his upcoming documentary will do for any greater good…)

Subscriptions to this Substack are free and I am not a paid columnist for any publication, but… you can hit the Subscribe button below to receive an email any time I post something on Substack, or you can hit the other button below to buy me a coffee, or… do both!