Social media has caused trials in the court of public opinion to become much louder.

This is especially true in cases of sexual assault and domestic abuse where the accused is often socially judged long before an actual trial commences, sometimes before all the facts have come to light. In addition to sometimes creating a legal gray area, this phenomenon has revealed widespread hypocrisy.

Although people will easily judge someone they don’t know, they will often give a popular celebrity every benefit of the doubt. This can be seen in the case of Sean Penn suing filmmaker Lee Daniels for slander after Daniels publicly stated Penn is an abuser of women.

Sean Penn has never been convicted of domestic abuse. When he was married to Madonna, she was hospitalized after he allegedly beat her with a baseball bat. Penn was later charged with committing battery for allegedly tying her to a chair and abusing her for hours on end, though Madonna dropped the charges.

In addition, his ex-girlfriend Charlize Theron reportedly refuses to talk to or acknowledge him. Combine these allegations with Penn’s long and well-documented history of violence, and you see how some, like Daniels, could form the opinion that maybe he commits relationship violence.

And yet, the average person had probably not thought that until reading that last sentence because people feel they know celebrities. They don’t want to believe they do terrible things, just as someone would never want to believe a loved one did something heinous until there is undeniable proof.

This apathy is born of hypocrisy and the only way to cure it is to admit it exists. People cannot continue looking at the professional achievements of a celebrity and their personal actions in the same light. The celebrity as a pop culture construct, defined by their public work, must be separate from that celebrity as a private human being.

Sean Penn’s amazing performance in “Mystic River” or “Carlito’s Way” is still the same as it was before you know about the allegations that were previously against him. No matter what Penn was accused of, these performances are unaffected.

This is why various Woody Allen movies continue to be great, despite the fact that he has been accused, but never charged, of molesting his adopted daughter. It is also for this reason that Floyd Mayweather is considered the best boxer in the world despite pleading guilty multiple times to violence against women.

A celebrity’s work does not belong to just that person, it belongs to the culture and everyone who’s a part of it, which must be acknowledged.

It’s terrible when someone’s wrongdoings go unpunished because they are a celebrity, but it’s worse to be one of the bystanders who let him go.

Mark DiBona is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mdibona@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @NoPartyNoDisco.

Published on September 29, 2015 at 12:00 am