Introduction to the special issue: Keanu Reeves as palimpsest

2019 was the year of the Keanaissance. It seems so long ago, a more innocent time. A time before the world was subjected to ‘inspirational’ celebrity sing-a-longs during the global pandemic (thanks but no thanks, Gal Gadot, you can keep the celebrity cover of Imagine), but concerned only with the return to prominence of one of our most beloved stars, Keanu Reeves. Since his emergence as a teen actor in the 1980s, Keanu Reeves has been an enduring yet elusive celebrity whose performances and star persona continue to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. Despite his unwavering popularity, from the turn of the millennium, his lower public profile saw Reeves assume the status of cult or folk icon, and yet from this cultural point, it appears that the mainstream world has – slowly – rediscovered and fallen for Reeves all over again. Of course, for long-term Reeves fans, Keanu had never really gone away, but his resurgent career was nonetheless greeted with wild adulation. USA Today declared June 2019 ‘The Summer of Keanu Reeves’ with the release of John Wick 3, Toy Story 4, the announcement of his role in video game Cyberpunk 2077, memorable cameo in Always Be My Maybe, viral memes (from ‘Sad Keanu’ to ‘You’re Breathtaking’), magazine features, the first ‘KeanuCon’ film festival, and high-profile fashion brand ambassador spreads (Saint Laurent). Indeed, looking over this representative list, it is clear that his later career renaissance is heavily characterised and informed by contemporary advances in convergence cultures and digital platforms, as our encounters with Reeves are increasingly mediated through gaming, social media, interactive online content, marketing and advertising, and other shifts in the filmic landscape. This special issue of Celebrity Studies is a timely exploration of the resurgent Reeves in the transmedia age, and the articles within explore how he continues to articulate and embody broader concepts and values of media stardom by considering the ways in which his post-2000 career has developed and been mediatised across a multitude of media users, texts and platforms.

Often discussed as an emblematic star of the 1990s postmodernist cinema and queer sensibilities with a liminal, endless screen presence that stood between the margins and the mainstream of contemporary filmic texts (c.f. Giarratana 2002, Rutsky 2001), even now, 20 years on from The Matrix (1999), Reeves remains an enigmatic icon straddling boundaries of fixed identity and meaning. His 21^st century stardom has extended beyond the Wachowskis’ ground-breaking series and his other key roles of the 1990s, and Reeves’ performances and star persona continue to reflect the wider ages and identities he lives through, endlessly being rewritten, rebooted and reinterpreted. Whilst arguably not the marginal icon he was in the 1990s with appearances in My Own Private Idaho (1991) and other key films associated with American Independent Cinema, nevertheless his screen work continues to characterise the often-paradoxical relationships between independence, hybridity, the transnational, and horizontally integrated conglomerate structures that define both modern mainstream and independent film, and media-making. Still very much associated with independent productions and non-studio roles, Reeves made his own directorial debut in 2013 with the Chinese-American action film Man of Tai Chi, played against type in a supporting role in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Amazon-distributed The Neon Demon (2016) and finally secured the financing to make the long-awaited sequel Bill and Ted Face the Music which was released theatrically and on VOD in 2020. From the success of John Wick (2014) onwards, franchise culture appears to inform so much of Reeves’ later screen career, and like other older stars (such as Harrison Ford) he too has revisited career-defining roles from Ted in Face the Music to Neo in the new instalment of The Matrix, The Matrix Resurrections (2021). The John Wick series moved from cult hit to global franchise phenomenon with an intense world-building created around this iconic character in film sequels, spin-offs for television streaming services, game adaptations and more. Reeves’ success as Wick in particular has partly reinvigorated interest in his screen work, conceptualising the change from the physically beautiful youth (Rutsky 2001) to the ageing, effortful labour of action role and star.

The character of John Wick further mythicises the always ‘extraordinary’ Reeves as a modern folkloric entity, whilst his ‘ordinariness’ has been embraced by transmedia digital cultures. The ‘Sad Keanu’ meme draws on the perception that Reeves’ tragic personal life has never been fully resolved, and viral fan encounters of ‘Keanu doing things’, recounted on Twitter emphasises an authenticity to his unstarry behaviour. His cameo in the 2019 Netflix production Always Be My Maybe brought questions of race and transnational identity back to the forefront of his star image, with his appearance reflecting an overt desire by the filmmakers to claim Reeves as an Asian-American icon (Yamoto 2019) – an aspect also explored by Nishime (2013), and in recent press, an identity openly claimed by Reeves (2021). Beyond this, the ongoing commercial appeal of the Bill & Ted series and his partnership with Winona Ryder in Destination Wedding (2018) reveals the significance of Reeves as a point of reference for exploring 80s and 90s ‘cool’ nostalgia. Revisiting the celebrity of Keanu Reeves, with an emphasis on exploring his career and image post-2000, offers a timely discussion around key contemporary media landscapes, from franchise, reboot and remake cultures; multimedia, transmedia and technology; nostalgia and memory; participatory fandom and online cultures; racial identity and transnationalism; changes across the mainstream, the independent and the marginal; ageing; narratives of contemporary celebrity authenticities; and the continuing persistence of mythic and elusive stardom.

Underscoring the prescience of reflecting on Keanu post 2000, we draw on the concept of the palimpsest – the rewriting of Keanu anew for each era. As Pappademas observes: ‘Every generation gets its own Keanu Reeves, except every generation’s Keanu Reeves is this Keanu Reeves’ (original emphasis, 2019, n.p.). The articles in this issue explore the rewriting of Reeves as a digital, transmedia, iconic emblem with a distinctive appeal to fans both old and new. Opening the issue, Tanya Horeck’s article reflects these central themes by unpacking the phenomenon of the ‘internet boyfriend’, reflecting upon the deepfake phenomenon (see also Bode 2021). Here, she argues that the cultural investment in Reeves can be contextualised in opposition to the toxic masculinity associated with numerous male celebrities and power brokers in Hollywood; the Me Too movement being just one example of many. Reeves’ decency, and his many good deeds recounted by fans online, are taken as a bar against which other celebrities fail to stack up, leading to the conclusion that he is indeed ‘too good for this world’. Nielsen and Nititham continue this line of enquiry by exploring the participatory culture of meme creation, and how memes expand the extra/ordinary elements of Reeves’ star persona. Here the meme genre of audioshop, which the authors define as ‘a video, or video montage in which out of context music, or sound is overlaid, or “shopped” is used to unpack the popularity of the “Keanu Walking in Slow Motion” meme, from Always Be My Maybe (2019). Using Hernández-Pérez and Rodríguez’s 2014) method of cross media analysis, Nielsen and Nititham argue that the popularity of Keanu Walking to Music as a viral meme is comprised of three distinctive parts: narrative features, intertextuality, and audience reception. Each of these elements intersects with Reeves’ continually shifting star persona, particularly in regards to race; with the ‘reclamation’ of Reeves as an Asian American icon in a predominantly Asian cast key to the promotion of the film.

Reeves’ shifting star persona is also highlighted in Raphael and Lam’s article examining the joint star personas of Reeves and Sandra Bullock as a promotional tool. Audience investment in high profile celebrity co-star couplings endures, with speculation around Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s off-screen relationship during the press tour for A Star Is Born (2018) providing ample provocation to the media, ensuring extensive coverage. The hysteria over the re-coupling of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck is a further example of our collective investment in celebrity co-star couplings, and a reflection of the contemporary media moment. As Yahr (2021, n.p.) argues ‘Bennifer is clearly the most logical next step for our early 2000s nostalgia-obsessed world’. Reeves and Bullock’s off-screen relationship garnered similar interest given their onscreen chemistry in Speed (1994) and The Lake House (2006), and more importantly, as Raphael and Lam argue, their overt performance of a flirtatious ‘are they/aren’t they’ relationship during promotional activities, and joint appearances. Media interest in their relationship was further heightened by separate appearances on Ellen (2018, 2019) where Reeves and Bullock independently admitted to crushes on the other in the past. Using a close textual analysis of their joint media appearances, Raphael and Lam extend Dyer’s work to interpret this dyadic relationship, and argue that audience investment, and the commodification of a joint celebrity persona is dependent on elements of authenticity in the presentation. Britta Moline also argues for the authentic embodiment present in Reeves’ performances, where his body acts as battleground – the literal place and the political nexus where, as case studies The Matrix, and John Wick: Parabellum show, the conflicts of these films take place. While the authentic embodiment demanded from action stars is far from unique, Moline contends that Reeves’ embodiment is both liminal and blank, allowing his body to act as a site for reflected audience desires. In a close analysis of key scenes from these franchises, Moline concludes that an exchange takes place between the audience and Reeves as part of the embodied experience of watching, while these roles draw attention to the battleground of his body, we, as the audience are simultaneously experiencing these sensations through our own embodiment.

Much of Reeves’ ongoing appeal has been his mystique, at least partially attributable to his performance of ‘reluctant celebrity’ (York, 2017.). In their article, Moffatt and Kaapa draw on York’s analysis, which demonstrates how celebrity reluctance can incentivise audiences to engage with political and environmental themes in unconventional ways. Here, the blankness of Reeves’ public image is overlaid with his potential to act as an eco-celebrity, where Reeves’ reluctance to participate explicitly in celebrity culture means he is often assimilated into various media and fan narratives (such as positive race representation, as shown in Nielsen and Nititham’s article). However, Moffatt and Kaapa argue, when read ecologically, and in terms of the cultural mythology surrounding Reeves, these ‘Keanu texts’ play with irony, humility and reluctance in ways that speak to emerging trends in eco-critical thinking’. They conclude that ‘In comparison to other eco-celebrities, Reeves, or more specifically, the “Keanu-text”, answers what happens when a celebrity refuses to engage with the technology/corporate culture driving environmental PR, while also appearing disinvested from the awareness generation activities that their role will inadvertently facilitate’. Reeves’ mystique and the way that short form or cameo appearances have informed his career resurgence comprise the central focus of Nitin Govil’s article. Here, the impressions of Reeves in terms of ‘depth’ and the ‘blankness’ attributed to his early career are analysed in contrast to the shift of his resurgence, largely due to the affordances of digital media texts. According to Govil, Reeves’ popularity as the subject of viral memes, in addition to his on-screen cameos, allows for new feelings of proximity, and parasocial relationships between Reeves and his fans. Exploring Reeves’ appearances in fan selfies, memes, and cameos such as Always Be My Maybe, Govil concludes that these short-form appearances have ushered in a new phase of hypervisibility in Reeves’ career, with each providing a distinct entry point for fans. Renée Middlemost’s article further examines fan engagement with Reeves as both a nostalgic object and an ageing, yet ageless, celebrity. Drawing on academic work concerned with ageing celebrities and ageing fans (Hills, 2018; Jerslev, 2018; Jerslev and Petersen, 2018), Middlemost suggests that despite his advancing age, Reeves is yet to face the same questions about his action star credentials that have faced 80s heroes now branded as ‘geriaction’ stars (Donnar 2016; McKenna, 2019). Using a case study of Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020), Middlemost argues that the film can be viewed as a powerful reflection on nostalgia and ageing, including the recognition that without his signature beard, although Reeves is ‘aging well’, he is ageing alongside the fans who have admired him since his early career. The special issue concludes with the film widely considered to have kick-started Reeves’ later career, John Wick (2014), and the franchised transmedia phenomenon it has become. In her article, Sarah Thomas focuses on the industrial significance of ‘John Wick’ as a site of tension between two dominant media systems of product differentiation: the star system and the franchise system. With John Wick representing, in the first instance, a self-contained star-driven film that reinvigorated the Keanu Reeves star brand, subsequent sequels, spin-offs and adaptations around this property have come to extend far beyond the singular identity of Reeves alone. Thomas considers the complex interplay between star asset and franchise (or character) asset in contemporary Hollywood practices. Exploring the place of the star figure in a franchise-oriented entertainment landscape, the paper takes Tara Lomax’s argument that whilst stardom and franchising systems [may] converge … they do not easily coalesce’ (Lomax 2021, p. 188) as its starting point. A series that both reaffirms and challenges the value of Reeves-as-star, the article explores how this is negotiated across the films and other transmedia texts that make up the John Wick universe and how it is partly reconciled through Reeves’ own off-screen celebrity status.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).