About Christoph Waltz and the BREXIT…
…and what he’s got to do with Political News
On Monday Sky News published a Youtube-Video featuring the famous actor and Oscar-Winner Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained, Inglorious Bastards) commenting on the Brexit and Nigel Farage resigning afterwards. In this video he calls Farage “the head rat” which leaves the sinking ship. He also calls the Brexit itself an “abysmal stupidity” and states that he is 100% against it. This video got quite popular and got shared a lot through multiple media websites. You can see the video below:
What got me interested in this comment by Waltz is actually the fact, that he is an Austrian-German actor, working mostly in Hollywood, who is familiar with the red carpets of the world. This surely has an effect on him, because (if you haven’t noticed already) there is a huge difference in how celebreties discuss political issues between the US and Germany. While in the US politics are discussed so heavily, that celebreties even openly support political parties, in Germany most of them are more reserved. You rarely find a German actor, singer or “Bachelor”-contestant willing to openly commit to on party, like CDU, SPD or even AfD. Christoph Waltz seems to have made the transition to Hollywood in such a way, that he isn’t shy to state his political opinion anymore.
What’s important is, that the way popular figures of the media talk about politics can have a huge impact on the way other people see the news. Many people admire actors, singers, etc. and are probably influenced by them. So should celebreties more often state their opinion on news or even political parties in Germany or would that do more harm than good? In the end politicians already know about the potential of celebreties: Just remember how Angela Merkel and the CDU celebrated their victory at the Bundestagswahl 2013 with a famous song by “Die Toten Hosen”. What do you think: Should German celebreties make use of their potential by commenting more on political news?
