I would like to think I’m not the only writer who keeps a giant subway-sized Joaquin Phoenix I’m Still Here promo poster on the wall in my office, but there’s a good chance I am. Very few people, it seemed, appreciated the intellectual depths and masterful executions required to “pull off” performance art of that magnitude. And such ill-termed “stunts” seem to always divide the pop culture obsessives — you either totally get it and, thus, unabashedly adore it (That would be me), or you totally don’t get it and, thus, vehemently admonish it (That’s a lot of people).
There was a lot of talk and comparisons to Andy Kaufman during (and especially after) Joaquin’s actor-goes-rapper / life-as-art performance, and the inherent parallels are unapologetically forthright. The question I hear from most detractors, or “haters,” in common terminology, is “well, OK; but what’s the point?” The point, both then and now, is simply to highlight the very strange fact that the average pop culture consumer (and, even, the average pop culture reporter) is so willfully gullible that he or she will accept almost anything as fact and, in turn, will use these “facts” to further love or hate the figure in question. Furthermore, the infiltration of the Internet as the go-to and come-from of practically everything pop culture-related (or, well, everything) has given new life to the perpetuation of often entirely false “headlines” and “accusations.” Further still, the ability of misinformation to spread like shit-fueled wildfire is even more accentuated by the relatively recent phenomenon of what can perhaps best be described as “mindless plagiarism.”
If you scroll through your Facebook news feed, for example, you’re likely to find a very startling amount of friends posting uncharacteristically eloquent or thoughtful prose regarding the meaning of life, the value of “moving on,” or something else perfectly melodramatic or self-inflated enough to just barely stand out amongst the usual white noise of social networks. What you won’t find, however, is accreditation.
For the average person (specifically, for the average Millennial), the formula is as follows: “Oh, shit! Kanye West said some cool shit in that BBC interview. I can’t remember it, though. I’ll Google ‘Kanye West quotes.’ Oh, shit. There’s one. [Copy. Paste. Post to Facebook.]” Notice the missing steps of: insert quotation marks, type original speaker’s name.
For further evidence of our generational aversion to “giving credit,” scroll through your Tumblr feed. You’ll find an endless sea of uncredited photographs, GIFs, memes, lyrics, and quotes. At best, you’ll occasionally find an embarrassingly mis-credited quotation. At worst, you’ll find “quotes” that never actually held any truth, credited to someone who never actually said them (Google “Kanye West Nelson Mandela,” for example).
Perhaps, then, it’s time for another Kaufmanesque performance-art / finger-point from an influential pop figure.
Enter Shia LaBeouf.
As is likely common knowledge by now, he’s been catching a very real amount of heat this week for reportedly plagiarizing, rather blatantly, the Daniel Clowes’ comic Justin M. Damiano via his own short film HowardCantour.com, which received — prior to these allegations — widespread critical acclaim (and even screened at Cannes last year). These allegations are compelling on their own, but they’re heightened dramatically when viewed in relation to the subsequent allegations regarding further plagiarism. As mentioned in this mock-heavy A.V. Club article, LaBeouf’s own tweeted apologies in response to the incident may have been directly lifted from Tiger Woods, Robert McNamara, and Kanye West, respectively. Furthermore, comic writer Josh Farkas has brought forth even more plagiarism allegations, specifically relating to LaBeouf’s comics Let’s Fucking Party (Farkas notes some uncredited Bukowski lines) and Stale N Mate (Farkas notes “lifted and massaged passages” from Benoit Duteurtre’s The Little Girl and The Cigarette). That same A.V. Club article very jokingly mentions the possibility that LaBeouf is simply involved in a “performance art parody,” which — as I’ve outlined here — is a theory worth exploring, sans jokes.
As a writer, the thought of someone else receiving credit for my work is akin to someone, say, shoving their unwashed hands down my throat and slowly removing my internal organs, one by one, then shoving them into a new body and saying, to the world, “Hey, look at this person I built.” It takes arrogance to blatantly steal, without manipulation, someone else’s work with the hopes of passing it off as your own. But, more than that, it takes an abhorrent disregard for not only the artist, but the art. A disgruntled old writer attaching his name to some young no-name writer’s manuscript in a desperate attempt at regaining favor is deplorable, yes; but questions of “Why’d he do it?” wouldn’t prominently exist, as its his very desperateness that lead him to such deplorability. A young, currently critically-revered artist, however, resorting to repeated acts of plagiarism very loudly begs that same question. Why DID he do it?
Attempting to find a reasonable answer to that question leads me right back to the increasingly probable chance that Shia LaBeouf is giving us his best Joaquin Kaufman, his finest Andy Phoenix, a beautifully orchestrated (if true) “fuck you” to the Tumblr generation — i.e. his own generation. Admitted plagiarism (HowardCantour.com) aside, what actual evidence of “performance artist at work” do we have?
For starters, a quick browse of Shia’s Twitter account (@TheCampaignBook; yes, where he tweeted those lifted apologies, including — most recently — two apologies reportedly lifted from Shepard Fairey and Mark Zuckerberg, interestingly enough) reveals that he’s following a “parody” account – @OriginalShia. That handle, as you might have guessed, is an endless stream of other goofily imagined (and, of course, fake) “Shia originals.”
Then, of course, there’s the (quite good, when viewed outside of the inherent plagiarism) short film that started it all: the Jim Gaffigan-starring HowardCantour.com, which focuses on a day-in-the-life of an online film critic, growing increasingly frustrated with the new realities facing his passion.
Interestingly, when viewing the short film (It’s been taken down from its original location, but you can still view it at Buzzfeed), you’ll surely notice that Shia LaBeouf is never credited as a writer. In fact, the writer credits are mysteriously omitted entirely, giving LaBeouf the sole title of director, nothing more; meaning: There is no listed writer for the short film at all. Add this to the fact that, as previously mentioned, pretty much all of Shia’s “apology tweets” have been directly lifted from other famous figure’s own apologies from unrelated incidents.
Given the subject matter of the film, is Shia (and, surely, a team of people behind him that would, if this were true, have to include Daniel Clowes himself) trolling the online film community?
Better yet, is Shia trolling the whole fucking world?
The answer remains to be revealed, but regardless, these incidents have sparked a truly fervent and refreshingly potent public dialogue on the very real problem, specifically among Millennials, of compulsive plagiarism, be it Tumblr-bred or otherwise.
