Shia LaBeouf, erstwhile child movie star of Even Stevens and Transformers fame, surprised the internet with a performance art piece titled #ALLMYMOVIES, in which he sat in a theater for three days and watched, in reverse chronological order, all of his movies. LaBeouf, 29 with a laundry list of leading roles, captivated audiences as they watched him watch himself. In this surprisingly heartwarming, human, and intimate project, LaBeouf garnered widespread attention, as gif after gif and article after article was published detailing his marathon. Interpretation of the work aside, there is no question that #ALLMYMOVIES made a cultural impact, recast LaBeouf in a new light, and heralded his transition from blockbuster actor to performance artist. After a somewhat esoteric series of performances, #ALLMYMOVIES is both a reflection and a recovery, ushering in, perhaps, a new era in LaBeouf’s art.
From an artistic perspective, #ALLMYMOVIES is captivating. Although it comes from a well-known artist, it reinvents and shifts public conception of the kind of art he can produce. In the internet age, it spread through social networks incessantly, marking a cultural landmark for a generation raised on the ephemeral. #ALLMYMOVIES stands out amidst a saga of seemingly endless possibilities for cultural consumption.
There is something unsettling, however, when a brilliant or seminal work of art obscures the persona of an artist. Allowing art to fully define its creators’ persona limits criticism of the artists themselves. It is this tendency toward absolutism that shrouds LaBeouf’s abusive, violent, and misogynistic actions in favor of praising his newest installment. Male artists, despite vast histories of sexual violence, domestic abuse, and misogyny have the privilege of being judged primarily by their art and not by their personal histories.
Sean Penn, Bill Murray, Michael Fassbender, John Lennon, and Woody Allen, to name a few, have long histories of violence against women, but their white celebrity obfuscates misogynistic pasts. Black artists like Chris Brown, R. Kelly, Dr. Dre, and Bill Cosby do receive some degree of deserved vilification by the media for similar actions, but again this is often relegated to a footnote as they produce new work. When male artists commit sexual violence, the reaction—or lack thereof—shows that art is more important than the lives and dignity of the women who are survivors of these abuses.
In response to the 2014 revelation that Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing his stepdaughter, Allen’s audience recoiled. Though it had long been known that Allen was perhaps slightly predatory, the explicitness of the violence he committed against his stepdaughter, as detailed in her exposé in Vanity Fair, caused revulsions. The public did not want to believe that Allen, a beloved and revered filmmaker, could do something like that. People rushed to his defense, questioning the mounting evidence in favor of his stepdaughter’s testimony. After a few months, once the fervor died down, Allen began filming his new movie, and he, once again, assumed his title of acclaimed filmmaker, sans rapist.
Similarly, when photos leaked in 2009 of Chris Brown’s abuse toward then-girlfriend Rihanna, the media blew up with public outcry. The photos of Rihanna with a black eye spread across tabloid and newsstand, and Brown lost significant cultural capital. Later that same year, his third album Graffiti topped the charts; in 2011, he earned a Grammy for F.A.M.E. This summer, Brown was featured on Meek Mill’s song “All Eyes On You,” which peaked at twenty-one on the charts. Furthermore, he dropped a new record, Back To Sleep, on November 9th, his sixth studio album; he had already released a collaboration album with Tyga earlier this year that debuted at number seven on the charts. While Brown may still be marked by his violent past, it has not affected his commercial music success, and just six years after the incident he continues producing hits.
Male artists, especially commercially successful ones or perceived groundbreakers, are given passes to shirk their troubled histories for sake of their art. When consumers of art overlook LaBeouf’s, Allen’s, Brown’s, and R. Kelly’s violent or reckless behavior and instead simply focus on the work produced, they sanction these artists’ actions. It is an implicit argument that the people they have hurt are less important than is their potential for creating art. It constructs a cultural norm by which men with power are increasingly able to get away with awful behavior for the sake of their art. Although it was proven that Roman Polanski raped a child in the ’70s, he still went on to direct over a dozen more movies, including the Oscar-winning film, The Pianist. In 2009, after Polanski was briefly arrested in Switzerland, over 100 prominent artists and celebrities signed a petition asking for his release, which was later granted. The petition does not deny his crime but instead cites his artistic importance and the artistic venerability of the film festival where he was arrested as sufficient grounds for overturning his extradition. His status as an artist, then, was more important to his peers than his admitted rape of a 13-year-old girl.
Of course, not all transgressions are created equal and should not be treated as such. There’s no world in which sexual assault of a minor is morally equivalent to a teenager’s DUI arrest, for example. What this comparison teaches, however, is that art does not exist in a void. Much as it comes from a social and historical context, it also comes from a personal context. Consumers of art must be critical of both the art and the people it comes from. As cultural icons, artists carry a strong influence on cultural paradigms far beyond their artistic scope. If a male celebrity rapes his partner, commits domestic violence, or drunkenly assaults someone and is not unilaterally condemned for his action, it creates exceptions and permissions to established mores of order and conduct.
This doesn’t mean consumers need to shun every artist with a troubled backstory. But one must also be a critical consumer, recognizing how an artist’s history informs their artistic production. Artists and their art do not exist in separate realms.
Photo: Simon Davison