By Sophia Mercado
“The D’Amelio Show,” released on Sept. 3, exclusively on Hulu, gives anyone involved with the mainstream media a behind the scenes look at what it takes to be a social media star and focuses on Tik Tok star, Charli D’Amelio.
Throughout the eight episodes, “The D’Amelio Show” gives watchers an insight into the work Charli D’Amelio and Dixie D’Amelio (Charli D’Amelio’s sister) do and the heartbreaking struggles that come with it.
With Tik Tok being a relatively new entertainment source, so is Charli’s D’Amelio’s fame. After blowing up overnight in 2019 at the age of 15, Charli D’Amelio has brought herself and her family in the limelight.
Mental health awareness has been a growing topic and with Tik Tok being a popular medium for entertainment, information and pop culture, this show illustrates what it takes to be an overnight celebrity in this new genre of entertainment.
Charli D’Amelio and Dixie D’Amelio continuously acknowledge their privilege, which relieves watcher’s presumptions of them and become capable of accepting their struggles. By the end of the show, you sympathize with them and recognize that they are teenagers ill-equip of handling the struggles of being a celebrity.
Featuring hate comments, busy schedules and mental breakdowns, “The D’Amelio Show” does a great job at portraying the hardships of being a social media star.
Throughout the show, Charli D’Amelio and her family express their concerns that Charli D’Amelio is unable to live a typical teenage life. Having a jam-packed schedule and being nitpicked by thousands of people everyday, Charli D’Amelio never gets a break to do what she wants.
By episode seven, Charli D’Amelio breaks down from the Internet and its tolls, resulting in a well-deserved break to regain motivation.
“[I’m] mentally and physically exhausted…it’s work, it’s my personal life, negative comments, school, content that I make for myself, it’s contracts…it’s meetings…it’s everything,” Charli D’Amelio said.
Charli D’Amelio’s older sister, Dixie D’Amelio, is a natural onscreen persona, and is the true star of the show. Throughout the eight episodes, viewers go through milestones and a mental health journey with her, ultimately seeing a new, happier person in the last episode.
Despite the great job the show did at getting its message across, the story could have been more concise. A majority of the show circles around the same topics and could have been made shorter. A lot of the topics and concerns were relevant, but the dialogues were redundant.
For example, when Charli D’Amelio’s dad, Marc D’Amelio, talks about trying to keep the family happy, it feels like you are rewatching the same conversation over and over.
With some reviewers arguing that Charli D’Amelio doesn’t deserve her platform, a common trait amongst those with the negative reviews is refusal to understand the relevance of the TV show’s message.
“The D’Amelio Show” succeeds in giving watchers a new perspective on becoming an overnight celebrity. Unlike actors and news anchors, social media doesn’t prepare people to handle the behind the scenes work and criticism they’ll receive and as a viewer, I hoped that they would have shed more light on how to prepare a social media celebrity to the harsh realities of the critical world.
Overall, “The D’Amelio Show” does a great job at highlighting the complexities of being a social media celebrity in a fun, entertaining way.
