James Franco claims his appearance in “General Hospital” was performance art
In a Wall Street Journal op ed, James Franco claims that his appearance in the daytime soap “General Hospital” was subversive performance art;
Performance art is all about context. “If you bake some bread in a museum space it becomes art, but if you do it at home you’re a baker.” Likewise, when I wear green makeup and fly across a rooftop in “Spider-Man 3,” I’m working as an actor, but were I to do the same thing on the subway platform, a host of possibilities would open up… It would be about inserting myself in a familiar space in such a way that it becomes stranger than fiction, along the lines of what I’m doing on “General Hospital.” I disrupted the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because no matter how far I got into the character, I was going to be perceived as something that doesn’t belong to the incredibly stylized world of soap operas. Everyone watching would see an actor they recognized, a real person in a made-up world. In performance art, the outcome is uncertain-and this was no exception. My hope was for people to ask themselves if soap operas are really that far from entertainment that is considered critically legitimate.”
I love his self determined and self reflecting portrayal of the spaces that he’s describing, and his idea that his celebrity as an actor gives him authenticity. And what bold aims! I guess soap fans everywhere are applauding his efforts. Although, by his own definition, the world of Spider Man 3 is capable of cloaking his “authenticity”, whilst the world of General Hospital is too flimsy to contain it. I’m confused.
It’s making me wonder what would happen if James Franco appeared on a subway platform as The Goblin. I mean, not for that long because it’s obvious what would happen- people would assume it’s a publicity stunt. When a dead animal was washed ashore in Montauk, people thought it was a publicity stunt. Or when a guy was stabbed outside of a store where people were queuing for the release of GTA 4, they assumed it was a publicity stunt. There was even a case recently in London when an unusually pink cloud appeared in the sky and was photographed by large numbers of people. The fact that many people thought it was a publicity stunt, rather than a natural phenomenon is, truly, stranger than fiction.
Via Gawker
