Fool me over and over and over

The practical jokers of Hollywood are the best rebels. Andy Kaufman was not exactly the first, but he pioneered the idea of entertaining your audience by tricking them into thinking they have been tricked. From the very beginning, with his "foreign man" standup routine, Kaufman shocked his audience and twisted their expectations for how celebrities are meant to act, up to the point where they had no choice but to laugh or vehemently hate him. And he received both reactions.

One of Kaufman's greatest gags, in my opinion, was in a performance at a university where the audience heckled him, asking for his "foreign man" impression. In response, Kaufman began reading The Great Gatsby into the microphone until half of the audience had left. At that point, he said he could either keep reading or he could play a record. The bored crowd cheered for the record. When Kaufman touched the needle to the vinyl, it proved to be a recording of him reading The Great Gatsby—exactly at the point where he had left off. By the end of the performance, he had read the entire novel through.

It's this type of dedication to a gag that propels Joaquin Phoenix to the top of my list of counter-cultural figures. An outstanding actor, nominated for two Academy Awards (one of which he should've won for Walk the Line), in 2008 Phoenix suddenly announced his retirement from acting, his dedication to a hip-hop career, and by all outsider accounts went completely insane.

His transformation from dark, brooding actor into dark, brooding homeless man that mumbles Bible verses on the corner caused a huge stir in the entertainment industry. The brilliance of his charade is not just that he fooled people, but that he drew such a strong reaction from his audience. Kaufman described himself as a "song and dance man" rather than a comedian, and if Phoenix's performance as his incoherent, inarticulate, confused and cocky alter-ego is not a "song and dance," I don't know what is.

Phoenix completely lambasted what it means to be a celebrity. His mockumentary I'm Still Here (the title of which I assume is a brilliant joke on the ever-so-serious Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There) raised the bar for picking apart our assumptions of what a celebrity is while still drawing a lot of emotion from its audience. I must say here that Phoenix's Bob Zmuda was his brother-in-law Casey Affleck, who proved beyond any final doubts that he is infinitely more creative than his older brother (though in recent years, Ben has showed some promise).

                                          Jim Carrey's brilliant portrayal of Kaufman in Man on the Moon

I've always said that true art is something created that draws a strong emotional response from its audience, as long as that response is not pure revulsion. In that respect, Phoenix's con is truly art. The audience hates his character for his vanity and reckless behavior, but he draws more sympathy than anything else for his character's struggle for acceptance when it is clear that he's simply not talented in hip-hop. It's a hoax, like Kaufman's many gags, but unlike Kaufman, Phoenix digs into the heart of what it means to be a celebrity. Kaufman used his fame as a platform from which to expand into even greater cons, but Phoenix used his fame to force people to realize how human celebrities are, and how we all crave acceptance in whatever niche we find fit.

Phoenix infiltrated the system and then attacked it from within. He pulled a con that no other celebrity of his stature has dared to pull, and he pulled it off perfectly. He risked his entire career in order to pull a prank that made a point, and this makes him a bigger rebel and all-around badass than can be found almost anywhere in Hollywood. He became the culture and then turned it on its head.

I hate Phoenix's daring. It makes me feel like I'm not there.