I think the psychology of Jeremy Renner is very funny, like not as an individual but as a specific location within society. I’m thinking about what Parkins (and Engels and etc) said about the petit-bourgeoisie being marked by a deep abiding terror over the instability of their own fortunes, that unlike the aristocracy there is not the same institutional guarantee of intergenerational class reproduction, and so the middle classes are terrified of every shadow on the wall for fear it could ruin them financially. So strong is this terror that this is a subjectivity inhabited by successful and unsuccessful people alike. And I’m also thinking about that Indigo F video essay about the gaylor phenomenon where they talk about how people who like extremely popular things (like the MCU) feel a deep insecurity over their own mainstream tastes and want to position themselves as being cool in the culture (thus a potential explanation for the gaylor phenomenon as a post-hoc justification for liking the most popular musician on the planet).
And so combining these two things together, to be an actor in something so dominant as the MCU, there also needs to be a similar bourgeois terror/hegemonic insecurity right ? We all heard what Martin Scorsese said about those movies. But at least if you’re Robert Downey Jr you’re something approaching a real actor on top of being one of the A-list stars in said hegemony, so there’s a certain level of security there. But Jeremy Renner is Hawkeye. You are marginal gentry in the McMansion kingdom, but you don’t even get the security of being gentry, you’re just bourgeois. So you create an app themed after yourself. The Jeremy Renner app. That is an articulation of a deep unshakeable terror at your own existence. Every time he appears on camera you can see the horror in his eyes no matter how well he tries to mask it
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