In “Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob,” actor, director, and writer Avan Jogia performs a clinical self-dissection, laying bare the complicated experience of growing up under the unforgiving spotlight of teen stardom. Following his 2019 poetry collection “Mixed Feelings,” Jogia returns with a more focused and scathing examination of celebrity culture, love, and identity. The collection reads like finding someone’s private journal—intimate, sometimes uncomfortably honest, and fiercely unedited.
Jogia, who gained fame through his roles in various teen television shows, tackles his complicated relationship with early stardom and its aftermath. This collection serves as both memoir and social commentary, delivered through poems that range from bitter and acidic to tender and vulnerable. The raw, unvarnished quality of the work feels less like polished poetry and more like urgent confessions scrawled in moments of clarity or crisis.
Dissecting the Collection: Themes and Structure
The book operates as its title suggests—an autopsy. Jogia examines the corpse of his former self with unflinching precision, dividing his exploration into several thematic sections that feel like different organs of the same body:
- The cult of celebrity: Poems like “fame as” and “orange carpets” explore the hollow nature of teen stardom
- Love and heartbreak: Intimate pieces that range from tender (“crying in bars with you”) to caustic (“blur person: part 2”)
- Identity and growth: Reflections on moving beyond teen idolhood into authentic selfhood
- Social commentary: Sharp observations on modern society, influencer culture, and commodification
The collection features free verse that often feels like stream-of-consciousness, interspersed with more structured pieces. This formal variance mirrors the chaos and complexity of the themes themselves—sometimes controlled, sometimes spiraling.
Strengths: Authenticity and Unflinching Honesty
Jogia’s greatest strength lies in his unflinching honesty. In “pin-up boys,” he reveals the unsettling parallel between studios photographing teen idols and adult entertainment, connecting dots between different forms of commodification. There’s no attempt to sand down the edges of difficult realizations.
His exploration of parasocial relationships feels particularly relevant in our social media age. In “voyeur,” he turns the tables on celebrity obsession: “Maybe the real pervert is you… At least we are f*cking participating in the orgy of the internet.” The accusation lands with uncomfortable precision.
Some of the most affecting moments come when Jogia punctures the illusion of celebrity glamour, as in “headlines”:
“The actor best known for _______ has died.”
I think it’s interesting when an obituary can limit your life to a moment.
These stark observations about how fame reduces personhood to marketable fragments reveal Jogia’s intelligence and self-awareness. His willingness to implicate himself in the very systems he criticizes gives the collection an authenticity that elevates it beyond mere complaint.
Weaknesses: Uneven Quality and Lack of Editorial Discipline
Despite its powerful moments, “Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob” suffers from unevenness. Some poems feel like first drafts—raw but unrefined. While this lends authenticity, it also creates sections that read more like journal entries than crafted poetry. The collection would benefit from tighter editing to maintain momentum and impact.
There’s a repetitiveness to some themes, particularly around celebrity disillusionment. Certain poems tread similar ground without adding new insights, causing the collection to occasionally feel padded rather than purposeful.
The prose poem “I am on set getting yelled at” recalls a humiliating encounter with a producer who publicly dressed him down, but ends abruptly without the reflection that would give the anecdote more resonance. These missed opportunities for deeper examination leave some pieces feeling underdeveloped.
Language and Style: Between Raw Power and Rough Edges
Jogia’s language oscillates between strikingly poignant and deliberately crude. There’s power in this contrast—moving from tender observations to profanity-laced stream-of-consciousness mimics the whiplash of fame itself.
His style favors directness over subtlety. When it works, it delivers gut-punch moments of revelation. When it doesn’t, it can feel like reading someone’s unedited notes. Poems like “the hunter problem” show Jogia at his best, examining how young men idolize self-destructive artists:
All of my idols were bastards
and drunks
and addicts
and assholes.
I think young men have a problem.
This critical examination of masculinity reveals the maturity behind the sometimes uneven execution. Jogia is learning in public, dissecting not just himself but the cultural forces that shaped him.
The Confessional and the Concealed: Privacy in Public
The most intriguing aspect of “Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob” is Jogia’s dance between revelation and privacy. Several poems feature the placeholder “______” to mask identities—particularly in sections describing encounters with other celebrities. This creates a fascinating tension between the confessional nature of the work and its strategic omissions.
Poems like “_______ (1)” describe encounters with unnamed famous figures, allowing Jogia to expose celebrity culture’s absurdities while maintaining a certain code of silence. This technique serves both practical (avoiding legal issues) and artistic purposes, highlighting how even in apparent confession, certain boundaries remain.
Comparison to Similar Works
Jogia’s work sits comfortably alongside other celebrity-authored poetry collections like Lana Del Rey’s “Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass” and Halsey’s “I Would Leave Me If I Could.” All three use poetry to explore fame’s underside and personal identity struggles, with varying degrees of literary success.
Where Jogia differs is in his more direct confrontation with the teen idol experience specifically. His work has more in common with former child stars’ memoirs than with celebrity poetry—it’s less concerned with aesthetics than with processing trauma and growth.
Compared to his previous collection “Mixed Feelings,” which explored his mixed-race identity, “Autopsy” feels more focused but also more uneven—trading the cohesion of his debut for the rawness of this sophomore effort.
Final Assessment: A Flawed but Fascinating Self-Examination
“Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob” is not perfect poetry, but it is a compelling document of a young man processing his unusual life experiences. Its value lies not in technical brilliance but in its cultural commentary and emotional authenticity.
For readers interested in:
- The psychological impact of teen stardom
- Celebrity culture critique from an insider perspective
- Raw, unfiltered explorations of modern identity
- The intersection of fame, social media, and personal growth
This collection offers fascinating insights, even when the execution is uneven. For those who enjoyed Jogia’s previous work or are fans of celebrity-authored poetry that prioritizes authenticity over polish, “Autopsy” delivers a reading experience that is by turns uncomfortable, illuminating, and poignant.
“Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob” ultimately succeeds not as refined poetry but as a cultural artifact—a time capsule documenting the psychological aftermath of growing up in the spotlight during the birth of social media, when the boundaries between public and private were permanently redrawn. In laying bare his own experience, Jogia creates a mirror for broader cultural examination.
Strengths:
- Unflinching honesty about fame’s darker aspects
- Powerful social commentary on celebrity culture
- Intimate glimpses into the psychological impact of teen stardom
- Timely examination of parasocial relationships
Weaknesses:
- Uneven quality across the collection
- Some pieces feel underdeveloped or repetitive
- Could benefit from tighter editing
- Occasionally prioritizes rawness over craft
Like its author, this collection exists in the liminal space between performance and authenticity, celebrity and humanity, confession and calculation. In performing his own autopsy, Jogia offers not just a dissection of his past self, but a mirror in which we might examine our own relationships with fame, identity, and the cultural forces that shape us all.