When Liam Payne died, his fans and peers condemned the trappings of fame.
More than 100,000 people have signed a petition in support of legislation to safeguard the mental health of musicians since his death on Oct. 16, though there’s still so little known for certain about what happened to the singer and former member of One Direction before he fell from his hotel room balcony.
Robbie Williams, a fellow former boy band member, responded to the tragedy by calling for change in the way society treats celebrities, saying, “I am the problem if I do nothing. We are the problem if we don’t.” Bruce Springsteen also reacted, saying, “Young people don’t have the inner facility or the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame.”
Payne, who skyrocketed to success at age 16, previously spoke about his struggles with addiction and mental health through the peak of his fame. He’s far from the only pop star to speak up. Chappell Roan, whose popularity has escalated astronomically over the last year, faced backlash for calling out how fame can be “abusive.” It’s often something media outlets and fans apologize for after an artist has already suffered, as seen with Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston.
The horrors of pop stardom are so ingrained in culture that they’re the basis for three 2024 films.
It’s an over-the-top gorefest, but the character endures the same kind of berating that Riley does in Smile 2, and that so many real-life pop stars face. She just gets to do something about it.
Even when audiences aren’t demanding constant performances, stars still feel the pressure. That’s confronted in Sunset Boulevard, a 1950 movie that has an adaptation on Broadway starring pop star Nicole Scherzinger, and the new horror flick The Substance — both about aging starlets taking drastic measures to stay relevant.
If horror isn’t afraid to confront the demands of stardom, why are we? The genre is notorious for reflecting what’s truly terrifying society, from McCarthyism to terrorism and AIDS.
Maybe this time around, we can recognize what horror is reflecting back to us and do something to make it stop.
