James Franco and the queer art of failure

ABSTRACT

For 20 years, James Franco has carved out a celebrity reputation distinguished by its mercurial character. Does he aspire to full-fledged stardom or some new variant of character-actor status? Is he a mainstream figure or a cult fixture, a cultural aspirant or a connoisseur and purveyor of sleaze aesthetics, a bro-ish guy’s guy, a la his dude-in-waiting Seth Rogen, or a queer icon in the making? Evidence for any or all of these alternatives circulates indiscriminately through his hectic, over-stuffed résumé. Throughout Franco’s wildly prolific career – 17 credits in 2017 alone, with another 10 already announced for 2018 – he has also flirted with queerness. Though identifying as essentially straight, he said in a widely circulated interview, ‘I’m gay in my work.’ This essay examines the distinctive aesthetic that Franco’s career articulates. I argue that Franco’s work, in refusing stable definition and challenging traditional notions of artistic quality, expresses a fascination with failure that takes on explicitly queer ramifications in its principle of over-production, subverting ordinary norms of success and linking a kind of artistic promiscuity to his own performances of masculinity.

KEYWORDS:

• James Franco
• queer theory
• star studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Morrison

James Morrison is Professor of Literature and Film Studies at Claremont McKenna College, CA, USA. His most recent book is AUTEUR THEORY AND ‘MY SON JOHN,’ a volume in Bloomsbury’s Film Theory in Practice series.