Taking the green pill? Keanu Reeves as ‘reluctant eco-celebrity’

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores Keanu Reeves as a ‘reluctant eco-celebrity’. Although Reeves’ onscreen career has revolved around films engaged with radical and alternative ideas, off-screen, he remains a reluctant cheerleader for any political cause. His reluctance to participate explicitly in celebrity culture means Reeves is often assimilated into various media and fan narratives. However, when read ecologically, we argue these ‘Keanu texts’ play with irony, humility and reluctance in ways that speak to emerging trends in eco-critical thinking. Here, we emphasise how celebrity reluctance can incentivise audiences to engage with political and environmental themes in unconventional ways. Celebrity eco-activism takes many shapes in its most visible forms, but often with the support of management structures, PR and reputational capital tied to the celebrity industry, where capitalist agendas remain the most pertinent objective. For us, Reeves’ ‘reluctance’ disassociates the actor from these PR exercises. Simultaneously, this Keanu mythology enables complex promotional discourses and fan engagement that a) exploit this ambiguity for greenwashing purposes, but which in other contexts b) reveals the contradictory processes on which celebrity engagement with environmental agendas rely. Consequently, the concept of Reeves as a reluctant eco-celebrity both challenges and advances the conventional understanding of the eco-celebrity.