Dozens of celebrities and social media influencers are being blasted online after posting coordinated pics and videos from MDL Beast, a music festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
And while the festival itself had a lot of the makings of a ‘normal’ electronic music fest — lights, beats, thousands of people hanging out together in the desert, a million social media posts — MDL Beast quickly came under fire because of its back story, and the entire reason for its existence.
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First, let’s go through that back story: the festival was sponsored and put on by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — a government that has long been criticized worldwide for human rights violations against journalists, their horrific treatment of LGBT people, and the many restrictions they put on women living in the Middle Eastern nation.
Most recently (and infamously), Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and dismembered in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The murder was determined to have been carried out by Saudi nationals; multiple intelligence sources report it was done specifically at the direction of the Saudi royal family, due to Khashoggi’s vocal criticism of the government in that country. In the months after the assassination, Saudi Arabia received swift, strong criticism from many governments and politicians around the world.
In September, to rehab the nation’s image, the Saudi government announced they were opening up the kingdom to allow foreign tourists to visit. They enacted policy changes nationwide, too, like allowing unmarried foreign couples to book hotel rooms together, and allowing solo female travelers to rent rooms. MDL Beast is an extension of this bald-faced attempt at public relations — to make the nation more appealing to Westerners, despite the Kingdom’s long-standing history of human rights violations and abuses.
Enter the celebs…
Unaware (or uncaring) of Saudi Arabia’s brazen attempt to buy them off, actors including Ed Westwick, Armie Hammer, and Ryan Philippe, and super models including Winnie Harlow, Alessandra Ambrosio and Joan Smalls made the trek to Riyadh and gleefully posted pics of the festival on social media.
Big-name electronic music acts like David Guetta and Steve Aoki were there to perform, further legitimizing the event for the government’s propaganda machine. Even Sofia Richie and Scott Disick showed up… because, of course!
Hammer got destroyed on social media after posting pics to his Instagram account from the festival — which he dutifully called a “cultural shift” akin to Woodstock. OK, there, buddy. Here’s that post (below):
Commenters blasted him for, as one follower wrote, “promoting a country that kills journalists, LGTBQ+ people, restricts the lives of women.” Wow!
But he was far from the only one who gleefully posted on social media, seemingly doing the propaganda work for the Saudi government.
For one, Sofia Richie put up a remarkably tone deaf pic, captioned “Saudi girls,” that immediately drew thousands of critical comments (below):
Wow. It sure is something to simply post “Saudi girls” about a place in which women are treated so poorly…
BTW, that Sofia pic was posted at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. According to The Guardian, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman detained political opponents in that same hotel in the fall of 2017. Nice work, Sofia…
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Irina Shayk and Stella Maxwell also drew ire from commenters for posting multiple photos from the festival throughout their trip:
“Cool,” one commenter wrote sarcastically. “Getting a paycheck and a glamorous trip in exchange for being a propaganda piece for MBS and a country that kills journalists and the LGBT. Do better.”
Fashion industry watchdog Diet Prada best summed up the MDL Beast Festival controversy with their own collage of celeb influencer posts from the event. To go along with it, the account wrote a scathing criticism of any celeb taking part in the naked, obvious propaganda, as you can see (below):
Along with the series of posts revealing attendees (and some who turned the festival down, like Emily Ratajkowski), the account shared this statement below the photos:
“What’s worse than an all white @revolve influencer trip? Cashing big fat checks in exchange for #content creation (aka propaganda) to rehabilitate the image of Saudi Arabia, a country said to be causing ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,’ according to the United Nations. According to anonymous sources, six-figure sums were offered for attendance and geo-tagged posts …
… Saudi Arabia has been spending billions to change its image in the west, but this is sure to be the most expensive campaign yet. In a series of Instagram stories posted by transgender model @teddy_quinlivan, it was revealed that fellow model @emrata had turned down the trip, evidently aware of the country’s human rights crisis. ‘It is very important to me to make clear my support for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, freedom of expression and the right to a free press. I hope coming forward on this brings more attention to the injustices happening there,’ said Ratajkowski in a statement to Diet Prada.
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Unfortunately, not all shared the same sentiments. There are simply too many attendees to name.”
Whoa. Too many attendees to name… no kidding!!
The whole thing is quite a bit to take in, but it’s very clear a LOT of people are rightfully very pissed off at a LOT of celebs after this weekend. And say what you will about influencers getting paid to promote shady (or stupid) products on their IG page or whatever, but it goes to another level when the thing they’re promoting is a notoriously dangerous and deadly government, ya know?!
Anyways, what do U think about this controversy, Perezcious readers? Are people right to be mad as hell at celebs over stuff like this?! We wanna know what U think about this crazy story!! Sound OFF in the comments (below)…
[Image via FayesVision/WENN/Instar]
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