Ellen DeGeneres and the Decline of Public Intellectuals

Television has the ability to guide how people think and therefore act. An influential show or person can create generational jokes, inspire fashion trends or polarize people across the globe. While television in recent years has taken a turn towards being more “politically correct” or inclusive, many shows from the 1990s to early 2010s were incredibly homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic and racist. This push comes from the societal changes that have happened in the last two decades from getting a Black president to legalizing gay marriage. As the views of the population change, what is seen on television almost directly reflects that, or mock anyone who does not believe in said changes. Many people grew up in a time where sitcoms were funny, but also educational. Sitcoms talked about serious issues that were meant to stir the pot and start conversations such as conversations around police violence, abortion and sexuality. In looking at the LGBT community specifically, the mid 1990s featured queerness as a “deviant ideology” in the church setting, and the community was viewed as a dirty, disease ridden pariah due to the AIDS crisis. While David Bowie and Prince were some flamboyant (but later on the record not queer) figures that people could look up to, there was a taboo around being queer. Ellen DeGeneres was one of the pioneers of this change who is not only still alive, but has written books about her experiences.

Ellen coming out as gay was not met with the same reception it would have met today. Today “coming out” is not met with nearly as much surprise as seemingly every celebrity is on the LGBT spectrum or at least advocates for LGBT rights. Most celebrities face online speculation about their sexuality, but due to the cultural acceptance of the LGBT community are normally accepted with open arms by their fanbase. Ellen DeGeneres was not afforded this luxury in 1997. Now as there are more queer people in the public eye, Ellen DeGeneres is no longer a spectacle, but instead a point of contention. Ellen Degeneres’s contributions to television and the LGBT community lie at the intersection of her bullying accusations which caused a loss of her core fan base. As Ellen faces modern day cancel culture, we as a society are forced to reckon with her work as a public intellectual not aligning with modern societal values.

Ellen DeGeneres is a public intellectual in every meaning of the word. There are two types of public individuals, the “traditional” and the artist. The traditional being someone like a college professor, where they are on the record an intellectual, and many become public figures through their work. Then there is the artist, where they become public initially through whatever talent they have then eventually show their intellect. Ellen DeGeneres would be considered the artist, where she got her initial fame, or publicity, through television with her first regular appearance being in the show Open House (1989). Her charisma led to her being cast in her own show Ellen (1994) which went on to be nominated for 35 awards in its four year run. Ellen featured an episode in 1997 called, “The Puppy Episode,” in which the titular character, Ellen, comes out as gay at the same time that Ellen DeGeneres came out. The series eventually saw a decline in viewership as LGBT issues were put at the forefront and the show took on a new tone. While the show ended up getting canceled in the season after, many issues that were considered too taboo were being examined with a human face attached to it for the first time. Ellen went on to host many awards shows, star in the Finding Nemo franchise, and make many appearances as herself in shows and movies; but her constant was The Ellen DeGeneres Show (2003). The Ellen DeGeneres Show went on for 3,294 episodes, over its 19 season 19 year run it was nominated for 171 Daytime Emmys and averaged 4.2 million viewers an episode (Biography Team). Ellen DeGeneres ended up setting many standards for daytime television shows with her gags, guest appearances and dancing.

Ellen DeGeneres being a public figure is undeniable, however her intellectual contributions to public discourse often go unnoticed. Academically, DeGeneres has published four books over the past 20 years discussing humor, home design, American life and being a talk show host. DeGeneres has given years worth of her knowledge and experiences to the public, and through this she has cataloged what life was like for queer women in the 90s and 2000s. Despite Ellen getting canceled after discussing LGBT issues, Ellen DeGeneres being a highly decorated personality allowed her to continue conversations about LGBT rights. Ellen’s public struggle to get married legally to her long time partner Portia de Rossi (now Portia Lee James DeGeneres) showed the struggles that queer people face simply by existing. In documenting a struggle that a marginalized group is facing, being able to identify a specific person humanizes the movement. As argued in, “Are Public Intellectuals a Thing of the Past” DeGeneres did her sole job as a public intellectual, “keeping the pot boiling.” Many people blame the cancellation of Ellen on it simply featuring gay people and their issues. Now, in many shows such as Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race an entirely queer cast is presented. In these shows many of the characters exist in their queerness without having to detail their struggles. DeGeneres’s existence in heteronormative spaces forced people to reckon with their thoughts about the LGBT community. This continues the point made in, “Are Public Intellectuals a Thing of the Past,” that, “The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.” While the parents of the late 1990s rejected Ellen’s message, the children of that generation listened, heard, and internalized the message. The media that most Americans consume today has changed due to the change in social norms guided by millennials and their media consumption (ROSENSTIEL). The widespread push for the acceptance of the LGBT community cannot be devoid of Ellen DeGeneres’s contribution to the public image of the LGBT community as the community transitioned from being seen as deviants to people deserving of love. DeGeneres’s work also argues one of the main points in, “Wicked Paradox: The Cleric as Public Intellectual,” that, “American democracy has always depended on public figures—and public intellectuals—whose work has been animated by strong faith.” DeGeneres is motivated by being true to her queer identity, and allowing others to come to have productive conversations surrounding the LGBT community.

Today the LGBT community has the ability to publicly love whomever they want with less fear of repercussion. The open dialogue about the struggles of the queer community has changed due to the reception of the community. While many activists during the AIDS epidemic had to fight for their voices to be heard, DeGeneres already had a voice before coming out, and amplified it in the last season of her sitcom. While Ellen did not exist in a vacuum and plenty of extenuating circumstances existed, the first queer main character in primetime television was able to open doors for queer characters and queer ideology to come. To reiterate, Ellen DeGeneres’s character allowed queer characters to exist in plots where their character is a problem, not their sexual identity. However, in analyzing celebrities in a more nuanced view, i.e. not hating or condemning a celebrity simply because they are a part of the LGBT community, many celebrities' characters have been called into question and lost status as a public intellectual. Ellen DeGeneres is one of those celebrities. DeGeneres’s characterization revolves around her being a happy, dancing, empathetic talk show host. DeGeneres would wear silly costumes, give gifts to her audience, and bring awareness to AIDS; she was even vegan as she did not want to hurt animals. However, off screen was a different story. Ten former employees of The Ellen DeGeneres Show accused DeGeneres of creating a "toxic" on-set atmosphere of "racism, fear, and intimidation", including failing to address executives sexually harassing female employees and making "racist micro-aggressions and abuse" to or about employees of color, firing employees for taking medical and bereavement leave, and replacing her own crew with non-union workers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (Ross). DeGeneres proved to be a toxic coworker and boss as many people corroborated the statement, and when her show ended two years later, many people rejoiced. DeGeneres is one of the many public intellectuals lost over recent years. As social media occupies more space in the newsphere, and people’s opinions hold more weight, many older stars are finding themselves “canceled” due to their old statements that they thought would never resurface. DeGeneres’s misuse of power is an example of why public intellectuals are becoming a thing of the past, she rested on “the assumption that common citizens are forever childlike and must be led by a class of experts.” In holding this ideology and acting on it, DeGeneres lost her intellectual prevalence amongst younger generations.

However, DeGeneres does still have supporters. Many people use the phrase, “separate the art from the artist.” In DeGeneres’s case, this means that people will still support her work despite her off camera personality. As DeGeneres is another public intellectual that has lost part of their status to the younger generation calling out previous statements, one must ask, can public intellectuals exist in the social media world? One opinion surrounds the art, “That is, our notions of the public intellectual need to focus less on who or what a public intellectual is—and by extension, the qualifications for getting and keeping the title. Instead, we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.” This opinion argues that there is still a place for public intellectuals because it does not matter who the person really is, but the intellectual work that they have contributed. The other lies in the artist, “[the] “future of the public intellectual" seem to have a kind of nostalgia built into them, in that we only worry over the future of something that seems endangered, something we have been privileged to live with and are terrified to bury (2014).” This opinion argues that there is worry about the future of the public intellectual because we have had the privilege of not knowing who these people are behind closed doors in previous decades. There is nostalgia in the “artist" opinion because some individuals were quite charismatic, but turned out to be awful people.

These two arguments question the need for public intellectuals. In a time where everyone is public, by virtue of social media, mobile phones and therefore mobile cameras, should those who are more public be entitled to privacy when they put themselves in the public eye. Can “intellectual” be a title that is bestowed upon individuals for sharing their life experiences when they lack the intellectual component present in communication? As old videos and sound bites reemerge, it seems like only a matter of time until every public intellectual’s dirty laundry is exposed. The place of the public intellectual is highly contested, as many people do not believe in giving power to problematic people, and others believe we must be led by someone. Public intellectuals have a place in the past, and will struggle to have a place in the future as everyone’s opinions become valid and one viral video can change the trajectory of a person, and therefore the legitimacy of celebrityhood.

In analyzing Ellen DeGeneres’s place as a public intellectual, it is undeniable that her work caused a lot of productive conversations around the reception of the LGBT community. DeGeneres’s off camera personality, however, has left many people with a sour taste of what a public intellectual can be. While there is plenty to be argued on both sides about the importance and necessity of public intellectuals, there is even more to be argued about where DeGeneres falls in this. Whether her condemnation will be permanent is undetermined, but her contributions to society cannot go unnoticed.

Works Cited

Biography Team. “Ellen DeGeneres - Age, Wife & Life - Biography.” Ellen DeGeneres, Hearst Digital Media, 12 May 2021, www.biography.com/actors/ellen-degeneres.

Mack, Stephen. “Are Public Intellecuals a Thing of the Past? (Repost).” The New Democratic Review, Stephenmack.Com, 14 Aug. 2012, www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2012/08/are_public_inte.html.

Mack, Stephen. “Wicked Paradox: The Cleric as Public Intellectual.” The New Democratic Review, Stephenmack.Com, 14 Aug. 2007, www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2007/08/religious_intel.html. Accessed 15 Sept. 2023.

Rosentiel, Tom. “Millennials, Media and Information.” Pew Research Center, 11 Mar. 2010, www.pewresearch.org/2010/03/11/millennials-media-and-information/.

Ross, Martha. “Ellen DeGeneres’ ‘toxic’ Workplace: Employees Allege Racism, Bullying in New Report.” The Mercury News, 17 July 2020, www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/17/ellen-degeneres-toxic-workplace-employees-allege-racism-bullying-in-new-report/https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/17/ellen-degeneres-toxic-workplace-employees-allege-racism-bullying-in-new-report/\.