Vegan celebrity activism: an analysis of the critical reception of Joaquin Phoenix’s awards speech activism

ABSTRACT

Acceptance speeches have long been used by celebrity activists as platforms from which to promote their personal, political or ethical agendas. The actor Joaquin Phoenix, an outspoken proponent for animal rights and veganism, dominated the Hollywood awards season in 2020 for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck in Joker and used his platform to address this cause. The reaction to Phoenix’s speech in the trade and mainstream press reveals much about the role of celebrity vegan activism in the contemporary cultural and political climate. This article analyses the critical reception of Phoenix’s Oscar speech across 37 US and UK trade press and mainstream news articles. In doing so, we highlight how gender and notions of hegemonic masculinity are managed and reproduced through the press discourse on celebrity animal rights activism. We argue that Phoenix’s star persona and celebrity advocacy complicate the gendered norms associated with vegan practice. Finally, we address the issues of authenticity by examining Phoenix’s performance of advocacy at the Oscars to argue that and the actor’s speech popularises an emergent redemptive narrative of veganism, which negotiates hegemonic masculine ideals.

KEYWORDS:

• Veganism
• activism
• awards

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. 12 articles from mainstream UK news outlets, 18 articles from mainstream US news outlets and 7 articles from US film industry trade press.

2. This article, though it does take into consideration Phoenix’s wider utilisation of his various award platforms, is focused on his speech at the Academy Awards and the reaction to it. The reason for this is two-fold: firstly, because this article is specifically concerned with vegan celebrity activism, and secondly because the Academy Awards represents the most significant platform for award speech activism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Parkinson

Claire Parkinson is Professor of Culture, Communication and Screen Studies at Edge Hill University. She founded the Centre for Human Animal Studies (CfHAS) which she co-directs. Her research interests focus on media; multispecies relations; activism; veganism; cultural history; and film and politics. Her work on animals, media and culture spans over two decades and has been published widely in books and journals. She is the author or editor of seven books including Popular Media and Animals, Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism and Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mediated Encounters. She has led research projects on public perceptions of veganism, cultural understanding of dangerous dogs and currently leads two AHRC-funded projects on multispecies storytelling.

Lara Herring

Lara Herring is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, in the UK. Coming from a film production background, Lara’s postgraduate research centred around film industry analysis, framed by cinematic geopolitics and the role of cinema in communicating national identity. Lara’s prior publication examines the ways in which social networking sites shaped the development of the Chinese film industry. Lara’s research interests also include critical animal studies and she has worked on studies that examine the pathways and barriers to veganism and is co-editing a collection titled ‘Animal Rights Activism On and Off Screen’. Lara’s current research includes a contextual analysis of Cloud Atlas (2012) that seeks to address the manner in which the film critiques carnism by simultaneously connecting the meat industry with cannibalism, human slavery and sexual exploitation. Lara’s doctoral thesis examined the relationship between the Chinese and American (Hollywood) film industries. Taking a film industry studies approach, Lara’s research investigated this developing relationship by way of changing funding and distribution models, the emergence of coproduction partnerships, studies of cross-cultural film products, analysis of the ongoing power-shift between the Chinese and U.S. film markets and the geopolitical industrial landscape that emerged as a result.