Is it wrong to question Shia LaBeouf’s rape narrative?

By Dan Brooks in Ethical Dilemmas, lying 2 Comments
Shia LaBeouf does even this unnaturally.

Shia LaBeouf does this unnaturally, somehow.

More than one of you sent me news that Shia LaBeouf says he was raped during #IAMSORRY, the performance-art apology for plagiarizing Daniel Clowes that was itself plagiarized from Marina Abramovic. Sorry—we got sucked into a Baudrillardian whirlpool there. The important part of the sentence is that somebody raped Shia LaBeouf, or so he said in an interview with Dazed. His description of events—a woman entered the exhibit, lashed his legs with a cane, and raped him while her boyfriend waited outside—conflicts with reports from his fellow artists. Also, it is insane. But to even allude to these issues is to question the narrative of a victim of sexual assault, which is wrong. I quote the AV Club’s Sean O’Neal:

But to question any of these details…is to enter into the always-uncomfortable arena of casting doubt on a sexual assault allegation…to blame the victim. Timed as it is in the midst of the continued controversy surrounding Bill Cosby, LaBeouf’s story could also be seen as commentary on the way society treats rape accusations, particularly when they involve a celebrity. But, again, to even suggest there may be some other, “artistic” purpose to LaBeouf coming forward with this would be to trivialize a charge of sexual assault.

I swear, if that son of a bitch made us think about this on purpose…

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Friday links! Smug sense of rectitude edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 24 Comments
Good one, dick.

Good one, dick!

Here’s a tip for you Kombat! Kids out there: you can be any kind of asshole so long as you are right and good. For example, I have a bunch of stuff I need to do today, but none of it matters because The New York Times Magazine published an essay I wrote. Monster, undying props to Willy for that one. It’s not that writing an essay is such a great achievement, or even an achievement I undertook today, but I feel like I’m off the hook for the rest of the morning. Today is Friday, and a smug sense of rectitude will compensate for any number of personal failings—from the rectified’s perspective, at least. Won’t you blithely transgress decency with me?

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Shia LaBeouf opens passive-aggressive art installation

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 4 Comments
Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete of Vice

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete of Vice

Even though he tweeted “I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE” three times in a row last week, Shia LaBeouf cannot put Beetlejuice back in the model. We know who he is, and we are interested in what he does—not in the good way anymore, where we want to see him be friends with a transforming robot, but in the other way where we cannot believe what a schmuck he is. According to Vice, LaBeouf is spending this week doing “some kind of super artsy thing” in LA. First, props to The Angel Ben Gabriel for the link, and second, I believe the word for some kind of super artsy thing is “art.” In keeping with Monsieur LaBeouf’s recent work, the art on offer seems passive aggressive in the extreme.

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Friday links! Crises of conscience edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

dog-shaming-hid-meat-1

There are two of you: the person you think you are, and the person who sees that person clearly. You can ignore your assessment of yourself; you can even forget about it for long stretches of time, but you cannot un-know it. Insofar as we spend most of our time faking people out and excusing ourselves, we are the people we claim to be. At one time or another, though, our honest assessments fill our heads, and we become the person who sees clearly. That person is a dick. Today is Friday, and our crises of conscience are in the mail. Won’t you put off opening the box with me?

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Shia LaBeouf interrogates authorship, taunts Clowes with skyplane

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology 0 Comment
An image of Shia LaBeouf originally published in The Worst magazine, as if that means anything

An image of Shia LaBeouf originally published in The Worst magazine, as if that means anything

It’s all our faults collectively, but Transformers made Shia LaBeouf an aristocrat. We had to see live actors be friends with computer-rendered characters from a cartoon about a toy, so now LaBeouf gets an income forever. Like many members of the leisure class, he has turned to art, producing a short film obviously plagiarized from a Daniel Clowes comic. Like many m.’s of the l.c. who get in trouble, he subsequently turned to philosophy, arguing that authorship is censorship and intellectual property is theft in a series of weird interviews that were, themselves, kind of plagiarized. He also hired a skywriter to blanket LA with a sarcastic apology to Clowes, who lives in San Francisco.

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