Sorry I couldn’t be here: performative celebrity meltdown and para-stardom

ABSTRACT

The star persona is a highly crafted and carefully managed identity. Stars often call attention to the impact of this construction on their own sense of being, acknowledging a difference between their public and private self. It is evident in Cary Grant’s oft-quoted quip ‘Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant’ or Marilyn Monroe’s admission ‘I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened’. Such comments indicate self-awareness about the nature of star and celebrity identity. But what can we make of those instances where these questions of identity, authenticity and the self are self-directed, played out in extended form and culminate in an apparent public ‘meltdown’? Considering the framing of the public behaviours of Hollywood actors Joaquin Phoenix in 2008–2009, Shia LaBeouf in 2013–2014 and Jim Carrey in 2017 as meltdown, this article explores explicit and public rejections of their established personas as they seek to navigate the contemporary star and celebrity landscape. These case studies invite us to reassess the meltdown in the contemporary period, to consider it not as an incident necessitating rehabilitation but as part of a process of reconfiguration – of the star and the self.

KEYWORDS:

• Meltdown
• performance
• stardom
• celebrity
• self
• persona
• Joaquin Phoenix
• Shia LaBeouf
• Jim Carrey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For an excellent discussion of the Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle scandal see deCordova (1990, pp.117–150).

2. From the outset, fans and critics alike debated the authenticity of the meltdown. Roger Ebert, who by his own admission ‘fell for it’, tallied the positions of 30 major critics and publications, noting that 9 believed the film was real, 18 were ‘not sure, open question or cagey’ and 6 declared it was a fake: ‘As a documentary it is the sad record of a man lost in the wilderness of drugs, ego and narcissism. As a fake documentary – a fiction film – it is a rather awe-inspiring record of a piece of high-risk performance art played out in public by Phoenix and Affleck over more than a year’ (Ebert 2010a).

3. Previously thecampaignbook.com (LaBeouf’s Twitter handle), the website has since been renamed labeoufronkkoturner.com.

4. For more on the concept of liquidity in relation to celebrity, see Sean Redmond (2010, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donna Peberdy

Donna Peberdy is a senior lecturer in film and television at Solent University, Southampton. She is the author of Masculinity and Film Performance: Male Angst in Contemporary American Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), co-editor of Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversion (I.B. Tauris 2017) and series co-editor of the Screening Sex book series (Edinburgh University Press). Her research on acting, performance, masculinity, sex and sexuality has been published in the journals Transnational Cinema (2014), Celebrity Studies (2013), The New Review of Film and Television (2012), Men & Masculinities (2010) and edited collections Acting (Claudia Springer and Julie Levinson eds. 2015), A Companion to Film Noir (Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson eds. 2013), Film Dialogue (Jeff Jaeckle ed. 2013) and Millennial Masculinity (Timothy Shary ed. 2012).