The New York Times - November 13, 2006
Caryn James

When Gwyneth Paltrow appeared in tribal makeup for an AIDS-charity print ad, jokes flooded the Web and threatened to eclipse the campaign.

And for every benign image of Brad Pitt hammering nails in India while building Habit for Humanity houses with Jimmy Carter, there's the risk of a Gwyneth Paltrow debacle. When she appeared in a print ad over the line, "I Am African," with tribal stripes painted on her English-rose complexion, scathing jokes flooded the Internet and threatened to overshadow the ad's purpose, to raise money for the AIDS charity Keep a Child Alive. The tightrope that charitable celebrities have to walk reveals how volatile the relationship is between the stars and their public, how easily a credulous audience can turn cynical.

The connection of stardom and charity is almost as old as movies themselves. The silent film idols Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks lent their images to the American Red Cross fund-raising campaign during World War I. Today the Red Cross has a director of celebrity and entertainment outreach, Amnesty International has a flourishing Artists for Amnesty program (both divisions created in the last six years), and many other philanthropic groups have created systems for tapping into the frenzy of celebrities with causes.

Bonnie Abaunza, the director of Artists for Amnesty, said that while celebrities have always been drawn to causes, "they've had more of an impact in the last few years." She continued: "It's more of a pop culture society, and there has also been a resurgence of social activism. It's the synergy between the two," that is behind the growth of celebrity - focused volunteerism. And, she said, stars create a valuable ripple effect. "When a Mira Sorvino attends a rally and speaks eloquently and passionately against the rape of women in Darfur, people read about it in People magazine, they see it on CNN, they want to get involved."

At the highest reaches, though, celebrity activism goes far beyond participating in rallies or telethons and becomes an integral part of the star's persona, the ultimate stage of his or her megastardom. In an industry so saturated with image making that a trip to a club can seem like a career choice, it would be naive to think that spin plays no role in charitable moves, however sincere the star's motives.

Mr. Clooney has been among the most successful at managing the altruistic side of his persona, partly by adopting a Bono strategy of choosing a specific issue, in Mr. Clooney's case the genocide in Darfur, and becoming well informed. More originally, though, he has put a self-effacing attitude to good use. He has taken his dad, the journalist Nick Clooney, along on fact-finding trips to Africa. On the day of his speech to the United Nations in September, he and his father appeared on the weighty BBC World News report. When asked if he could change minds on the Security Council by urging them to send peacekeepers to Darfur, George Clooney replied: "My job isn't really to change their minds. My job is to make sure that cameras and lights follow where I go" in the region, calling attention to the crisis and the United Nations' responsibility there. It's hard to find a less messianic or more palatable strategy.

If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were a bit less adept at spin, they could easily be ridiculed for messianic aspirations, with two children adopted from Cambodia and Ethiopia and the famous sojourn in Namibia for Ms. Jolie to give birth there. But they are almost always photographed with one of their children in their arms, walking embodiments of caring parents (however many nannies may be trailing off camera). Last week brought pictures of Ms. Jolie and her son, Maddox, sitting among children in a refugee camp in New Delhi on a day off from shooting her new movie. A constant stream of photographs like that can offset any number of reported scuffles between the Pitt-Jolie bodyguards and the paparazzi.

But Madonna's nanny was photographed carrying her adopted baby home from the London airport, a terrible public relations move that illustrates how the spin slipped out of Madonna's control early on. Arriving in New York with her three children for the damage-control tour 12 days later, she carried little David through the airport herself, in a nicely compensating maternal photo. If someone has to proclaim her sincerity on "Oprah" and "Dateline," though, it may already be too late to recover.

Madonna's frequent shape-shifting may have made the public skeptical, even though she has consistently inhabited her wife and mother role for years now. More likely, callous though it may sound, by adopting an African baby she seemed to be copycatting the Jolie-Pitts, latching onto a celebrity trend.

Such trendiness is sure to backfire because no one likes to feel played, especially a public enamored of its starry idols. When attempts at altruism are so clumsy they seem like ploys, members of the public feel they're being treated like idiots.

That may be what happened with the "I Am African" campaign, which initially appeared in a fashion supplement to Conde Nast magazines in September and continues in its magazines this month. The Keep a Child Alive Web site (keepachildalive.org) explains the campaign's concept more clearly. It was created by Iman, who wanted what she calls "a modern take on African tribal makeup." Easy for her to say; she's Somalian. It's a lot harder for stars like Ms. Paltrow or Elijah Wood to manage without looking at best foolish and at worst like cultural imperialists.

Leigh Blake, the president and founder (with the singer Alicia Keys) of the group, which provides antiretroviral drugs to African families, said: "What we were trying to say is that we all have African DNA. We were trying to spark a discussion about our origins and the importance of paying attention to Africa." She was shocked at the backlash, she said, yet has no regrets. "We got millions of hits on our Web site even from that negative press," she said, and many donations followed.

As tone-deaf strategies go, "I Am African" is nothing next to the image of the usually pallid Kate Moss painted black for (Product) Red, a sight most Americans were spared. The photograph appeared on the cover of a special section of the London newspaper The Independent, edited by Giorgio Armani, to benefit (Product) Red. (That's the project founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver, in which companies like Armani and the Gap create a product line whose proceeds go partly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS.)

Even in the days of the Black Panthers and radical chic there wasn't such a ludicrous appropriation of racial identity by the privileged. Ms. Blake of Keep a Child Alive sees what she calls "subterranean racism" in the backlash against her group's campaign, she said, "as if the media can't believe these people could possibly care about Africa." And since the Madonna flap, she has been disturbed by a new trend, of hesitant celebrities wondering, "What's the point in coming forward if the press just lambastes you?"

But it's never that simple, and the dangers of stars' involvement cuts many ways. Ms. Abaunza of Amnesty has had to turn down so many celebrity offers that she is amused at the predictable way some people try to exploit activism to offset bad publicity. She said, "I always anticipate that when a celebrity is arrested for drunk driving or something else, I'll inevitably get a call the next day."

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