Australia has a new celebrity crush and her name is Cassandra Sainsbury.
The 22-year-old is locked up in a Colombian jail after being charged with attempting to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine out of the country, but given the saturated media attention, it would be easy to think that she’s a new reality TV star. She’s even been nickname: “Cocaine Cassie”.
Since her arrest on 11 April, we know all about her failed business in Adelaide, the fiance who’s standing by her, claims that she was set up by a mystery man, that she apparently “likes the attention” she’s getting from the press, conflicting reports about her conditions in jail and that her mum Lisa Evans and sister Khala allegedly wanted the Australian government to pay for Sainsbury’s legal defence.
Every day comes a new allegation. Sunday’s was the claim she was once a sex worker, which was then used as a moralistic wedge to imply her guilt. Her lawyer also appeared to change her story, saying a mystery man threatened to kill her family if she didn’t smuggle the drugs.
Her mother and sister signed a lucrative deal with Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes while her fiance inked a deal with rival Channel Seven’s Sunday Night. And News Corp had a reporter and photographer outside the Bogotá jail to record them arriving for their respective visits to Sainsbury last week, on top of the daily updates.
Sainsbury is the latest example of a white, middle-class Australian who has faced justice while overseas and whose story has become a national pastime.
Like Schapelle Corby, the status of whether Sainsbury is innocent or guilty has become a daily guessing game, with Facebook threads and water cooler discussions revolving around the swirling facts and rumours.
We have a complicated relationship with this conundrum: we can at once feel disgusted by Sainsbury’s alleged behaviour and also horrified by the potential consequences she faces.
Corby remains the ultimate criminal poster child. Arrested in 2004 after 4.2kg of marijuana was discovered in her boogie board bag in Bali, she’s now set to be deported from the country where she has spent the past 13 years in jail and on parole.
From the moment of her arrest, Corby and her family became household names, often presented as larger-than-life personalities, while the nation became fixated with whether Corby was guilty, or believed her claims that the drugs were planted in her bags.
There has been cover stories with magazines, interviews with tabloid newspapers, a documentary, books, petitions, telemovie and endless details about Corby’s life.
There’s also the Bali Nine and Michelle Leslie – all of whom were caught with drugs in Bali – and have been at the centre of an all-consuming media storm.
There is an element of bigotry about this particular scenario: it’s often white, middle-class Australians who are pitted against developing countries filled with brown people and justice systems we assume are corrupted or second-rate. We turn a blind eye to the hundreds of asylum seekers locked up in prisons with appalling conditions in Manus Island and Nauru, but the plight of a white person in Bali or Colombia becomes a symbol of fairness and freedom.
Both Sainsbury and Corby are attractive young women who are presented as damsels in distress – holed up in subpar conditions and begging for help.
What Sainsbury and Corby have in common is that they come from backgrounds that many people can identify with. Corby was a beauty student from the Gold Coast; Sainsbury a personal trainer.
They are typical Australians, living typical lives.
It’s this ordinariness that helps capture the public and the media’s attention, and like a reality television show, we become invested in their journey, from arrest to trial and beyond.
We feast on their daily moves to a point that they are dehumanised; they are simply vehicles for storylines that tantalise and give us something to talk about at the pub. And the latest allegations about sex work just adds a spicy new element to the entertainment value of this story.
The criminal celebrity is not a new concept. Bushranger Ned Kelly, who was hanged for the murder of a police officer and other crimes in 1880, is as much a national icon of those whose fame came from more legitimate means. Despite being a lifelong criminal, Kelly’s legacy is of an Australian version of Robin Hood, someone who rebelled against the British empire and all it stood for.
This elevated status and all-consuming interest is a uniquely Australian trait; other western countries don’t seem to buy into it in the same way.
It’s a thirst we’re addicted to and will only intensify as Sainsbury prepares to face a Colombian court for the first time. Given the money and attention at stake, it’s hard to know who’s taking advantage of whom.
For a person swept up in Sainsbury’s plight, it almost doesn’t matter whether she’s guilty or innocent. Either way, we will be drip-fed the next instalment that features drama, claims of betrayal and abuse, financial trouble – all the ingredients of a good soap opera.
We are a society addicted to stories. It doesn’t matter if an actual person is fighting for their life and freedom, we want to know all the gritty details.
As to who to blame for this huge level of attention, it’s hard to know whether the media supplies all these details because there’s an insatiable demand, or whether we happily drink up every development because there’s an abundance of supply.
The modern newsroom is heavily dictated by clicks and if a news director believes the cost of sending a reporter overseas for several weeks, or even longer, will be eclipsed by the revenue those extra clicks will deliver, then it’s a fairly simple answer. If viewers and readers feel morally queasy by this coverage, then they have the power to change this by not feeding the demand.
