Jill Roberts and The Rise of Social Media Celebrities:
The Cultural Relevance of Scream 4
The late Wes Craven released the concluding chapter of his Scream film franchise back in 2011. Mixed reception to the film aside, there is still something about this film that stands out to me as extremely relevant, especially in this day and age. To those who have not seen the film, I must warn that there are spoilers ahead.
Social media has become an inescapable part of our daily lives. We carry social media sites on our phones through our apps, and even viral YouTube videos are shown on the news nowadays as topics of interest. Celebrity has always been linked with the media, and it is no different with platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram. Social media has also given rise to a new kind of celebrity, one that Theresa Senft has coined micro-celebrity.
What does this all have to do with Scream 4? Once the film reveals that Jill Roberts is the mastermind of the recent Woodsboro Murders, her motive behind such an act differs from that of the previous Ghostface. The previous killers were motivated merely by wanting revenge on Sidney Prescott. Jill, however, wants to be famous.
Jill is motivated by the attention economy, a marketing perspective assigning value according to something’s capacity to attract “eyeballs” in a media-saturated world (Fairchild, 2007). Jill lived a pretty everyday life before the murders. She had a close group of friends who she hung out with on a daily basis and a boyfriend who, although cheated on her, seemed to be intent on seeking her forgiveness. Still, this barely gave her the attention she craved for. Jill lives under Sidney’s shadow during the film's first act when her friends question her about her cousin Sidney’s return to the town. In Jill’s own words during her confession:
“I mean all I ever heard was Sidney this and Sidney that and Sidney, Sidney. You where always so fucking special! Well, now I’m the special one.”
Michael Goldhaber argues that the internet has provided people with information but has created a scarcity of attention, making it a valuable resource. Everybody, very much like Jill, is fighting to be in the spotlight.
Microcelebrities, therefore, must construct a persona to attract an audience. Jill’s persona was that of the victim, the single survivor of a copycat killing spree. It must also be noted that Senft states that micro-celebrities see their audience as fans rather than friends or family. When asked by Sidney why Jill would go as far as killing her friends, she calmly replies:
“My friends? What world are you living in? I don’t need friends. I need fans.”
Social Media personalities cannot be added as “friends” on sites like Facebook, they are “liked”. On Twitter and Instagram, users are “Followed”. On social media, we have become brands ready to be consumed by the masses.
I believe what Wes and screenwriter Kevin Williamson gave Jill as the motive behind her killings rings more true today than it did in 2011. Just five days ago, a woman was charged with fatally shooting her boyfriend in a YouTube stunt. When 19-year-old Monalisa Perez asked her boyfriend why he wanted to film such a stunt, he replied, “Because we want more viewers. We want to get famous.”Perhaps this was the way Craven and Williamson saw this was the path websites like YouTube and Facebook would lead teenagers down. Andy Warhol once said that everyone would be world-famous for fifteen minutes in the future. I wonder if he imagined the length some would be willing to earn those fifteen minutes. Wes Craven sure did.
References:
Fairchild, Charles. 2007. “Building the Authentic Celebrity: The ‘Idol’ Phenomenon in the Attention Economy” Popular Music and Society 30, no 3: 355–375.
Goldhaber, Michael. 1997. “The Attention Economy and the Net” First Monday 2 (4–7).
