ABSTRACT
Visual representations of celebrity campaigns have changed in recent years. They have moved away from depicting starving children towards featuring agitated celebrities. Even where celebrity campaigns have moved from humanitarian crisis to political engagement, like in the Sudan campaigns made prominent by George Clooney, representations of conflicts follow a "Western" logic that relies on the "white" saviour but lacks real understanding of local contexts. This chapter examines media representations of "Africa" and the surge in celebrity engagement in the global South. It traces these phenomena back to the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, whose iconic TV coverage resulted in the creation of Band Aid and subsequent celebrity activism. The chapter argues that this engagement centres on a one-dimensional representation of "Africa" as a place of destitution where "innocent" women and children need "Western" compassion – a compassion often denied by ruthless and predominately male leaders.
