Say what you want about James Franco, but it’s impossible to pigeonhole the man.
During the Comedy Central “Roast of James Franco” on Sunday night, a panel of comedians fired a number of shots at the actor-slash-professional squinter — his grand flop as an Oscar host, his questionably questionable sexuality and his odd career choices.
Seth Rogen summed it up nicely: “Who is the real James Franco? Is he an artist? Is he an actor? Is he a scholar? He’s tough to pin down; although I’ve heard many guys have been able to do it.”
The roast was, predictably, full of super-original gay jokes and jabs at Franco for not following the Hollywood-heartthrob formula.
Jonah Hill said, “You know how you always hear George Clooney and other big movie stars saying, ‘My philosophy for making movies is: one for them and one for me.’ But not my guy James. James is a rebel. He has his own philosophy on this: one for them, five for nobody.”
Hill has a point: James Franco is a West Coast WASP jack-of-all-trades. In addition to appearing on-screen across an improbable range of characters — from assorted bad-boy roles to Allen Ginsberg and Harvey Milk’s lover — he’s dabbled in art, received a master of fine arts in creative writing and contributes to Vice magazine regularly.
Franco has done what few celebrities manage to do: He avoided a predictable, prepackaged image.
A key aspect of achieving celebrity is marketing a specific image, and this isn’t a new concept. The members of the rock band Kiss branded themselves with the infamous face paint, One Direction has capitalized on the boy-band brand, Clint Eastwood perfected the sneering-cowboy brand and every child star under the Disney umbrella must carry himself or herself as — you guessed it — part of the scrubbed-clean Disney brand.
Branding is such an integral part of celebrity marketing because celebrities are essentially products. According to www.About.com’s marketing page, branding delivers a message, connects to a targeted audience’s emotions, motivates buyers and concretes user loyalty.
Of course, it’s a totally stupid concept once you think about it, especially when applied to people. People, even celebrities, are multifaceted. It’s like that one episode of “America’s Next Top Model” when Tyra Banks assigned her contestants vague buzzwords to help their images — words like “daring,” “candid” and “free.” The contestants then spent the rest of the episode worrying about grooming themselves into fitting their assigned roles.
Branding may establish consumer loyalty and help celebrities score product endorsement deals, but it’s a disservice to the human beings who are stuffed into a one-dimensional role.
Franco may be kind of a tool, but at least he’s unpredictable — and has a humorous sense of self-awareness.
In closing the roast, Franco said, “I think this is truly my punishment for the Oscars.”
A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 9/4/2013 under the headline "Francophilia: Why James Franco is a marketing maverick
