Ellen DeGeneres And The Avatar of Kindness
What happened to Ellen DeGeneres?
Psychoanalyzing a star by comparing their performances with rumors about their private behavior is a dicey exercise. It's also an unavoidable one when the star is as big as DeGeneres and the cognitive dissonance created by those rumors is so great. That someone who has shown such smarts, self-awareness, and generosity might leave a trail of destruction in her personal encounters is baffling. That an avatar of kindness could have been oblivious to, or even enabled, abuse on her set is disturbing. It is natural to wonder whether having to continually modulate herself to be, per the title of her recent Netflix special, Relatable, has had an effect on how she acts when cameras aren’t rolling. It is also natural to wonder if this is simply another story of fame’s bubble having a corrupting influence.
For the Ellen DeGeneres Show’s happy-go-lucky antics to go on without first dispelling the cloud around it seems unfathomable, and the firings of its allegedly abusive producers do not address the larger problem of DeGeneres’s tarnished image. Perhaps with time, DeGeneres will make amends with anyone she may have hurt and explain herself honestly. Maybe the show will morph (already, staffers have been told they will be given more time off). Or maybe she’ll find a new outlet for her talents, an outlet that lets her flaunt her edge without harming others.
Source: The Atlantic