I would like to make it clear that I am writing this article under protest. I don't think Shia LaBoeuf deserves any more screen time or column inches than he's already gotten. He's a privileged child who fancies himself a groundbreaking iconoclast, and the only thing differentiating him from the asshole in your creative writing workshop who insists that his cliches are secretly high art is that LaBoeuf is famous and has a platform. That he's trying to frame himself as a sort of objectivist Robin Hood of intellectual property law makes the joke no less trite or played out.
Brief recap, for those of you who have been lucky enough to avoid the nonstop bombardment of LaBoeuf Follies this holiday season: In 2012, LaBoeuf released a short film called Howard Cantour to significant critical acclaim, which lasted until last month, when someone finally noticed that the film was a word-for-word plagiarism of the comic Justin M. Damiano by Ghost World cartoonist Daniel Clowes. LaBoeuf issued a series of bizarre and increasingly hostile apologies and challenges, which not only included skywriting but in several instances turned out themselves to have been plagiarized from a slew of sources. Soon, it came to light that LaBoeuf had plagiarized large portions of his 2012 comics from works by Charles Bukowski and French novelist Benoît Duteurtre. Meanwhile, LaBoeuf continued to taunt Clowes on Twitter "announcing" his next short film "Daniel Boring" -- the name of another Clowes comic. This eventually prompted a C&D letter from Clowes's attorney, which LaBoeuf of course then tweeted.
All the while, the media has swarmed around this self-made train wreck, alternately clutching pearls, armchair-diagnosing LaBoeuf with the psychiatric disorder du jour, lauding him for highlighting the impact of government regulation on creative genius, and generally showering him with attention.
LaBoeuf isn't a hero. He's not "brilliantly parody[ing]" anything. He's an entitled celebrity who has spent the last few years declaring himself a genius while stealing the work of other artists -- usually ones with lower profiles than his own -- and elbowing into communities and creative markets on the strength of his fame.
Nor is he a poster child of Gen-Y remix culture: Remixing depends on taking works already in the popular consciousness and significantly transforming them to create new art that riffs off their existing significance. LaBoeuf stole a story wholesale from an independent cartoonist, claimed that he had come up with it on his own, and soaked up profits and accolades until he was publicly called out—then, retroactively, decided to play up his theft as performance art. This is not Jonathan Lethem's cleverly and honestly plagiarized defense of plagiarism. LaBoeuf's defiance and plagiarized apologies aren't an organized protest or a satire: Satire requires some original thought, or a point beyond fishing for attention while ducking responsibility.
It's telling, I think, that one of the writers LaBoeuf has consistently cribbed from is Charles Bukowski, the Angry Literary Dude (TM) and patron saint of callow, entitled would-be writers with chips on their shoulders. Bukowski, at least, was interesting. LaBoeuf isn't even original in his rebellion. He's a troll, and a particularly inelegant one, willing to do whatever it take to keep the camera fixed on him and demanding we take him seriously as an adult while refusing to take even a shred of responsibility for his bullshit. Patton had it right:
There's nothing here worth seeing. For that, go read some Daniel Clowes.
