James Franco’s new art project is taking place on Instagram, and he’s playing the role of artist, subject, curator, and guy who owns MS Paint. James has been staging paparazzi-style photos of himself doing sex things with various romantic partners, obscuring the partner’s face, and scribbling commentary over them as a parody of celebrity news outlets.
Guess what this means for me? By collecting these fake news story photos and using them as the subject of an actual news story, I am contributing to James Franco’s art project! Now, officially, James Franco and I are art collaborators — which is a thing I’m putting on my resume when I want to get a job at a coffee shop.
Jame’s intention is, of course, to satirize our cultural obsession with celebrity and to mock the media outlets who treat photos of famous people as news items. My intention, let’s be honest, is to get pageviews. That’s why I put the word “gay” in the headline. But doesn’t James need me to report on the project to make it complete? Aren’t I the missing link in this whole project? As the renowned critic and aesthetic philosopher Arthur Danto once said, “Art.”
Although, he might have just been saying his name.
I’m titling this one, “Peter Pansexual,” because that is ponderous, pop culturey, and contains a way solid pun:
Unfortunately, the photo where James invents a sex move and tries it out with the squirrel below was deemed too risqué for Instagram.
It looks a little something like this:
s;-/-&
Art.