Everybody and their cousin is posting the video of Joaquin Phoenix’s appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, in which the actor behaved very strangely, and the whole world suddenly erupted in expressions of sadness and concern for the actor.
Sigh. Here we go again. Weren’t we just talking about this issue?
Blogs are lining up to post the video so that all the world can see a celebrity’s meltdown. Just as we did with Christian Bale’s cuss-a-thon, we’re joining the rest of the world, feasting our eyes on someone else’s misfortune. Because, you know, that’s the honorable thing to do when someone publicly humiliates himself: Post the video so everyone can enjoy it.
If you embarrassed yourself in public, would you want the video shared with the rest of the world? Or should we refuse to join the circus?
If you decide to share the video and join the mob that gossips about it, watch your step. This time, you may be walking into a trap.
In posting the video and joining the “Can you believe it?” craze, bloggers are playing right into the hands of filmmaker Casey Affleck, who’s is reportedly making a documentary, which stars Phoenix, in which the actor appears to be acting strangely, starting a hip-hop career, and going through a meltdown of some kind. It looks like they’re focusing on the media’s mob mentality (if it can even be called “mentality”, since no one appears to be thinking).
And that would make sense. Casey Affleck last appeared in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and the last act of that movie is all about the cult of celebrity, and how you can become famous by behaving badly in public, by making a sensation out of yourself. It certainly looks to me like Affleck is playing that out now in the real world, following a friend with video cameras in a way that exposes the lunacy of our celebrity-obsessed culture.
Will you end up in the movie as one of the screeching birds that circled the scene?
In this age of Borat and Bill Maher’s Religulous, you’d think that folks would start showing some savvy about the joke.
Folks, if you’re *really* interested in the well-being of Mr. Phoenix. If you’re worried about him, PRAY for him… don’t spread the documentation of his embarrassment.
And if you want to avoid embarrassment yourself, a simple Google search will show you that Affleck has been preparing this stage for for weeks. Many sharp-eyed, media savvy critics quickly suspected that these exhibitions are part of a stunt, a hoax, an attempt to show how stupid the media and its audience can be. The latest article demonstrating that this is not as simple as it seems can be found here, at Newsweek.
Personally, I think this kind of thing was funny when Andy Kaufman did it. Maybe the media frenzies have run on unchecked for so long that it’s time for us all to get fooled again.
But please, can we move on? Do we have to join the ogling, gossiping mob on this one? Or can we prove their premise wrong, ignore, the video, and move on to things that actually matter?
Bale’s tirade was a private matter that was regrettably made public several months later. But Phoenix’s appearance on Letterman was a completely public matter and is thus fair game in a sense that Bale’s tirade never was.
What’s more, Phoenix has apparently done this before. Nine years ago, while promoting another film (by the same director!), Phoenix gave an interview on Letterman in which, according to Entertainment Weekly, he “came off as hilariously dazed and confused, claiming he couldn’t remember his birthday or, at one point, where he got his tattoo.” And this was a few months after Jay Leno told Phoenix to “be here in person” next time. So everyone involved arguably knew what they were getting into.
Google “Joaquin Phoenix and late night: What’s old is new again” for the EW report.
“Fair game”?
So… if a celebrity has a meltdown on live television, then we should go ahead and replay it ad nauseum for everyone? Somehow, it becomes okay then?
Well, I’m not convinced that this was a meltdown, per se. Phoenix has always been a little weird when doing the movie-promo thing (and I say this as one who sat at a roundtable with him on the Walk the Line junket just over three years ago).
At any rate, I did add the qualifier “in a sense that…” The Bale and Phoenix scenarios are completely different, in that one was a completely private matter that should never have become public, whereas the other was public from the get-go.
I agree. Moments like that, on a TV show that will be aired (example: Tom Cruise on Oprah) were already going to be public, and if a celebrity acts dumb, then oh well. But really, don’t we have better things to do than rant and rave about it?
And following people around with cameras and posting videos of private moments in their personal life iS NOT okay. You know, like those pictures people post on the internet of celebrities being drunk and crazy…THEY certainly weren’t planning on sharing that with the world.
Although, I would have to say Miley Cyrus taking pictures of herself in a bikini was very immature. And, on top of that, she acted like it was everybody else fault for them existing. What’s the point of taking pictures like that anyways?
But anyways. Pray for them…they’re people like us.
You do realize, of course, that millions upon millions of us put this into practice on a regular basis. I never post or comment on that kind of behaviour.
But then, I don’t read the celebrity magazines in the checkout line at the grocery store either.