Still here, but where the fuck is that?

 

It’s quite possible Joaquin Phoenix won’t come out of this in good health. The process of moving on from his I’m Still Here actor-to-rapper project is going to prove a monumental head-fuck, if not due to his own struggle to break away from his actions of the past year and do something different (which he will because there’s no way he’s becoming a touring rapper) then due to the inevitable dissatisfaction he’s going to endure when the world finally sees the film and misinterprets the shit out of it, which is already happening based on the trailer (and those not-at-all-set-up phone-filmed viral videos).  Some news services have been gingerly calling it a documentary, others not risking their credibility and declaring it a ‘mockumentary’ (and I can’t believe no one has yet used the headline ‘You must be Joaquin’). The truth is probably both neither and somewhere between.

Scheduled for a cinema release in the US next week (at the time of writing an Aus release date could not be tracked down), I’m Still Here is looking like the next in a continuous flow of mass-media-commentating performance pieces that set out to further and further blur the lines between performer and performance. Just as many people came out of Banksy film Exit Through The Gift Shop wondering if Thierry Guetta (‘Mr Brainwash’) was real or a construction, or gullible tabloid writers wonder whether Lady Gaga’s stereotyped celebrity persona is ‘her own’, it’s likely media outlets and those who’ve closely followed Phoenix’s actions as a ‘rapper’ aren’t going to get the answer they want from watching I’m Still Here. But those calling for a definitive ‘real’ or ‘joke’ call on these projects are missing the point: it is the inseparability of performer and performance that is being pursued; the breaking down of the distinction between  ‘real’ and ‘constructed’ and the fact that, regardless of whether the projects can be placed into either category, the result is the same. Does is matter if Thierry Guetta or Lady Gaga are ‘real’ or pieces of ‘social commentary’? They have still become ‘celebrities’. 

 Two side notes here: 1) It is worrying that we’ve become collectively paranoid that people are playing ‘pranks’ on us. Being suspicious of any kind of mass-communicated device is one thing; getting angry that what we’re being shown hasn’t come with a one-sentence explanation is another (I refer to the inane entries of frustrated bloggers and news writers). Have we really become that insecure about our intellects that we can’t cope with the idea of something being up for interpretation, or the idea that our interpretation as ‘audience’ is part of the message itself? 2) On the topic of Lady Gaga, there’s some great writing on The Vigilant Citizen blog about her use of symbolic references to government mind control (such as the pic above, in which her dancer displays the 'all-seeing eye'). That said, the main problem with Gaga as performance artist is that she keeps trying to ‘expose’ herself as ‘artistic genius’ rather than sticking to her performance message. She just rly rly wants to be given the credit she deserves, which makes her performance largely redundant.  

 Perhaps the most obvious sign of what Phoenix is setting out to achieve is the title of the film, which is fairly likely a reference to the themes explored in Bob Dylan semi-biopic I’m Not There. In that film, the title referred to the transformation of something personal (Dylan’s ‘self’) into something detached from its origins (his ‘public persona’ and fame). I’m Still Here, therefore, is the inverting of that concept; the turning of an idea removed from the ‘personal’ (a ‘fictional’ character steeped in mystery) into something inseparable from its carrier, Phoenix. Phoenix has not traded his ‘self’ for a character, as actors do, but has let the character infiltrate his life and self to the point where there’s no difference, or at least one worth distinguishing. 

Of course, what most media want from the film is just to know whether they’re being ‘punk’d’ or whether Phoenix has really ‘lost it’, in which case he becomes a story worth following (because the greatest commodity a ‘celebrity’ can have now is being ‘unknowing’ of their media influence). It’s most likely the media will only get what it wants when this all blows over, however; when Phoenix actually has to pick up the pieces of his life and decide what to do with them. Let’s just hope he’s got a good therapist.