HBO's Teenage Paparazzo: A Boring Socialist Diatribe

Chris | InformationLiberation
Sep. 28, 2010

A young capitalist entrepreneur goes into the business of being a self-employed paparazzi, instead of working the fields he chooses to take a camera and shoot pictures of celebrities for both profit and personal enjoyment.

The story of the beauty of capitalism and the division of labor made possible by private property and free markets? Not to HBO and the movie's star, Adrian Grenier, of HBO's Entourage.

Instead, this young capitalist entrepreneur is 'exploiting' the people he takes pictures of and needs to learn a lesson about how evil he is and how he needs to change his life and learn to "develop pictures" in some dark room in a dusty warehouse.

Forget living the life of a paparazzi, an entirely legitimate job which the entire film focuses on, your picture taking is actually the epitome of Marx's exploitation theory. The film is filled with celebrity obsession itself, but god forbid some young person who wants to live the easy life provided by capitalism be allowed to live guilt free. No, instead he needs to become a self-conscious pleb who works a 9 to 5 like everyone else.

After glamorizing the kid for however long, the movie switches at the end to demonizing him and saying he needs to change his life. The climax of the film comes when Adrian Grenier shows the kid a screening of the movie with his mother right next to him. They sit down and watch the film and you can see the kid's face becoming neurotically self-conscious, his mother chastises him after it's all over and laments how bad he came off on the film, saying he needs to be some pleb or some nonsense.

Unfortunately, the kid is not wise enough to realize how awesome he is and how miserable the whiny socialists around him are. His supposed friend, Adrian Grenier, who is no doubt making millions off the entire celebrity culture he so despises, feels the need now that he is filthy rich to lecture the kid about how he's being "exploited" by the evil paparazzi who take his picture, including little Austin. Austin unfortunately believes all the socialist diatribes from his supposed friend and mother and falls into place like a good little pleb, perhaps he will go to work the fields and get a "real job" once this is all done. What a shame, he could have been a real talent and made himself rich off his fame just as his socialist friend Adrian did.

I give the film zero stars because it's utter trash. I give Austin 5 stars and I hope he can find this review and realize how backwards his idiotic friend and mother is. Perhaps he can do something else, but unfortunately now that he's older the novelty has probably passed. Score one for the altruistic socialists.