Narcissism and all-consuming performance explored through the critical gaze of Bob Fosse in ‘All That Jazz’

Posted On January 29, 2025January 29, 2025

Our daily lives have become increasingly consumed by an ever-present sense of performance. Instagram is flooded with videos of couples meticulously staging moments—kissing and spinning to a slowed-down Ella Fitzgerald track—while others exploit the small dramas of their inner lives for clicks and engagement, using anything at their disposal for online attention. It’s a troubling state of affairs when nothing is experienced privately or held sacred as the boundaries between our inner and outer worlds blur. We become walking performances of ourselves, fixated on maintaining a polished image and front-facing persona.

Many have raised questions about the long-term consequences of this erosion of authenticity and the rise of performative living. As it increasingly threatens the fabric of human relationships, it feels most fitting to revisit a film that so presciently predicted the dangers of this phenomenon.

At the height of his career, Bob Fosse was the most influential stage director and Broadway choreographer of all time and is still remembered as such decades after his death in 1987. The performer was seen as a god-like figure within the theatre, known for pioneering an entirely new style of dancing aptly labelled ‘Fosse dancing’, becoming famous for its disjointed movements, finger-snapping and turned-in knees that look something like a dysfunctional crab. But for someone so accomplished and obscured by the cloud of celebrity, the director was a deeply flawed partner and father whose personal failings became hidden by his constant performance and life in the spotlight, with Fosse choosing to obliterate his public image with one final and starkly revealing performance.

All That Jazz, directed by Fosse in 1979, is a biographical film based on the life of Fosse himself, following a successful theatre director during the final year of his career as he reckons with the loved ones he neglected and mistreated to achieve success, reflecting on his life on and off the stage and how they ultimately blurred together.

The film is a blend of dream sequences as the main character, Joe Gideon, imagines how he will be met in the afterlife, looking back on his personal failings and the people he failed on his journey to the top. It is a glittering nightmare of regret and shame, with Gideon pushing himself towards his own demise as he pursues his final masterpiece, knowing full well it will be his death after years of neglecting his health for the sake of show business.

As Gideon becomes aware of his imminent end, he is confronted with the fact that everything he achieved on stage and the way his fans perceive him is a facade, with audiences and critics showering Joe Gideon with praise and accolades that do not match who he is in his personal life. His ego slowly corrupted his values and perception of himself, leading him to become a terrible father and unfaithful partner who is obsessed with his external image and the cheap thrills of fame, sacrificing time with his daughter for time on stage and cheating on his girlfriend with much younger dancers.

During the final moments of his life, Gideon is confronted by the fact that he has become a performance of himself, corrupted by his time in the entertainment industry and existing as an empty person who, despite having achieved all the success in the world, has abandoned everything real and honest to reach this. People shower him with attention and awards, but who he is on stage is a heightened version of himself, and because he’s allowed himself to be consumed by constant performance, he is now a hollow man who has pushed away the people he loves for a chance to be in the spotlight – known by many, but loved by very few.

One scene, in particular, encapsulates this theme: Gideon experiences an unusually quiet night at home with his daughter and partner as they perform a dance routine they choreographed for him. It’s a beautifully haunting and innocent moment, made all the more poignant by what has preceded it—Gideon’s spiral into a haze of drug use and torrid affairs. Confronted by the pure, unconditional love of those closest to him, his face betrays a range of emotions. At first, he is entertained, then moved, and finally overcome by a wave of regret. Watching them, he realises these women, whom he has been too afraid to love fully, have offered him a closeness and fulfilment he has pushed away. He could have had this connection, but now it’s too late.

Gideon’s all-encompassing commitment to performance has robbed him of the ability to be truly vulnerable, corrupting his capacity to love and experience genuine human connection. To him, it has all been swept up in his addiction to performance, leaving nothing that feels real.

By being placed on a pedestal by the public, constant praise and performance disillusioned Gideon to the point where he became ruled by his ego and what he created. He slowly comes to terms with his failures not as an artist but as a person, with a performance so consuming that he completely detached from real life and what truly mattered, culminating in the neglect of his most important relationships.

The film ends with a dizzying and larger-than-life musical sequence titled Bye Bye Life, with Gideon dying on a glittery stage as he says goodbye to the people in his life, finally letting go of the performance and succumbing to the emptiness of his life’s work. It warns us of the dangers of becoming absorbed by our own image and the pursuit of a perfect image, that fame and attention will somehow mend our wounds and heal us from our pains. The only way out is through, and a life of performing only barely conceals our own vulnerabilities, obliterating our chance to truly be human.

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