At 28 years old, Shia LaBeouf could be said to done it all, as far as cinema goes. He’s led a major blockbuster franchise with "Transfomers," worked with directors as varied as Lars von Trier, John Hillcoat, Robert Redford and Oliver Stone, and has spent no shortage of time making headlines as an enfant terrible. So it’s not a surprise that he’s become wary of celebrity in general, and that he’s finding more inspiration in performance art.
"The performance work is democratized and far more inclusive," he continued. "As a celebrity/star I am not an individual —I am a spectacular representation of a living human being, the opposite of an individual. The enemy of the individual, in myself as well as in others. The celebrity/star is the object of identification, with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which are actually lived. The requirements to being a star/celebrity are namely, you must become an enslaved body. Just flesh — a commodity, and renounce all autonomous qualities in order to identify with the general law of obedience to the course of things. The star is a byproduct of the machine age, a relic of modernist ideals. It’s outmoded."
While there is an entire industry that would disagree with LaBeouf that the idea of screen idols is on the way out, his words are provocative. While it would be easy take jabs at LaBeouf for windy pronouncements like the above, there is something to be said for his awareness of the media process. Thoughts? Doth he protest too much? Let us know.