![]() After announcing his retirement from acting in 2008 (Child, 2008), he decides to pursue a hip hop career, lacking any indication of talent for making music. ![]() ![]() Then, the truth about Phoenix unravels and, as it turns out, the "true" Joaquin Phoenix is an uncontrolled, unstable, and hot-headed guy whose ego is seemingly severely affected by his celebrity status. The masses get to see Joaquin’s transformation and the crowd goes wild: Phoenix is the perfect celebrity scandal. So, as the audience, we are prepared for what is about to come: we are about to see the spectacle of Joaquin Phoenix revealing his "true self". The world of mass media and celebrity culture is a world well-known to Phoenix, who debuted as an actor when he was eight years old (Reynolds, 2015). Phoenix is ready to reconnect with his own self again here, away from the personality that he felt forced to adopt by the media. It seems that this film is meant as an act of protest against media and celebrity culture and its rigid requirements for clear-defined characterizations. So he agreed to make a documentary as a way to come to terms with himself: “ I don’t want to play the character of Joaquin anymore: I want to be whatever I am” (Affleck & Phoenix, 2010, 0:04:03). He describes a chicken-egg scenario: did this happen because the media responded to his personality, or was this character formed through media? Joaquin admits that he had begun to utilize this characterization, and he eventually regretted it. Here, Phoenix explains how from a young age, he had experienced the characterization of himself as emotional, intense, and complicated, all perpetuated by “ them”. “ I’m just, like, fucking stuck in this ridiculous, like, self-imposed, fucking prison of, uhm, characterization, you know, and it happened to me young” We may already have an explanation in one of the first scenes of the film: How can we interpret this film and its purpose? Why was it made and what was the message Phoenix and Affleck were trying to bring across? Understanding the messageįirst, let's take a closer look at the film itself. How can we explain the effect a film has on its audience when the boundaries between truth and fiction are purposefully made unclear? By analysing the content and the form of I'm Still Here and comparing it to various forms of film, we can achieve a better understanding of its purpose and its effects. In this article, I want to explore the mass confusion that Phoenix and Affleck managed to ignite with their piece. Why? Was it something about how Affleck and Phoenix presented their piece that made the audience expect truth and authenticity? Did the audience feel betrayed? In the case of I’m Still Here, however, it seemed very important for people to find out the truth about the film. This mass confusion seems hard to reconcile with the concept of a post-truth era as articulated by, amongst others, Ralph Keyes (2004): deception has become a modern way of life and as the boundaries between truth and lies have started to be blurry, lies increasingly become viewed as more acceptable. In doing so, Phoenix successfully confused first the media and later the audience of his film. But then how can this film be defined exactly, and what was its purpose? Calling it “ a piece of performance art” surely seems to be an understatement, since the performer in this case managed to stick to his performance everywhere in public life for a whopping 18 months. Only after the film's premiere at the 2010 Venice Film Festival did Casey Affleck admit that I’m Still Here was essentially “ a piece of performance art” rather than a documentary – and interestingly enough, he refused to call it a hoax (Wise, 2010). People are astonished: how could this have happened? Is this authentic? Is this real? As his new identity is revealed to the audience, he becomes a target for public criticism and mockery. Through this journey, we get to see how a celebrity scandal unfolds: Phoenix announces his retirement in October 2008 and adopts his new persona – a scruffy, uncontrolled, and unstable version of himself, who turns out to be not particularly successful as a rapper. I'm still hereĪt first sight, the film seems to be a project by director Casey Affleck, who follows Joaquin Phoenix around with a camera as he plans to retire as an actor and focus on his new hip hop career. ![]() It explores celebrity culture and its scandals and in doing so it plays with the boundaries of truth and fiction. I’m Still Here is a 2010 film by Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix. ![]()
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