Seeing as how everyone on every social networking site is calling for him to be lynched (no, seriously, some people are calling for him to be lynched. Go on twitter and search the terms “Kanye West” and “lynch”), just as Kanye West defended Beyonce (whether she needed it or not is another story), someone needs to come to the defense of the fallen (by societal standards) 808s and Heartbreaks star. There are a number of issues that are so pervasive that no one is addressing, let’s call them the “Elephants in the room”.
The first elephant is simple: in the category of Best Female Video, 19 year old Taylor Swift’s video for “You Belong to Me” beat out videos by Pink, Lady Gaga, and finally Beyonce. The elephant lies in the ridiculous claim by the MTV VMAs that Taylor Swift’s video was better than Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video. The fact that the dance for the video has been redone and reworked (even making its way into a Saturday Night Live skit) is testament to the fact that it was indeed the Best Video of the year, or as Kanye rightly stated, one of the best videos of all time. In a category like that Beyonce should have easily taken home the prize but she did not. She also didn’t take home the price for Best Pop video. That accolade went to Britney Spears for “Womanizer”. Again, nowhere near the accolades that were showered upon “Single Ladies” were showered upon “Womanizer”, yet Britney’s video bested Beyonce’s and she stood 0 for 2 on the night. Now, many will contend (I like to call this group, the Appeasers) that since Beyonce won Video of the Year, that all is right with the world. Still many (again, the Appeasers), will contend that Beyonce allowing Taylor Swift to come out and finish her acceptance speech after she won the Video of the Year award is further proof that Kanye was completely wrong and that Beyonce felt that Kanye was wrong. It only proves that Beyonce felt bad about the situation and wanted to smooth things over on her end, which is a legitimate concern of hers. Some have even gone further to defend Beyonce’s defeat by saying that MTV did the fair thing by giving everyone one award. However, minor research shows that just last year MTV gave Britney Spears, Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year, for “Piece of Me”. Which leads me to my next poi--, err, elephant: race.
There are many who are going to immediately stop reading this because of the insistence upon some racial focus here. These people, I like to call, Post-Racialists. To their claim, I argue that to deny that there is no racial significance in Beyonce, the only woman of color who as Kanye West argued, one of the Best Videos of all time, being rationed awards to the appeasement of two white artists, is to deny the still consistent racial overtones of our society. To deny that there is no racial significance in the backlash at Kanye West that has manifested itself in racist language (a simple Twitter search of the terms “Kanye West” and “Nigger” produces astonishing results) is to deny the pervasively racist society in which we live. To deny that the there is no racial significance in the demonization of West by mass media and society a la social networking is to deny that the pseudo-scientific racial theories of inferiority and savagery that were prevalent throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the legacy of which was felt in the 20th century, has had any effect on the 21st century. In many ways, having Kanye West, this powerful image of Blackness, verbally “attack” Taylor Swift, the All-American “Aww-Shucks” image of Whiteness, is unsettling to a lot of people, many of whom are calling for the star to be lynched. What is left out is the forced appeasement at the sacrifice, whether accepted or not, of Taylor Swift and Britney Spears (both white females) at the expense of Beyonce (a woman of color). There is a precedent in the previous year of one video receiving all three awards, and a video of the viral magnitude of Beyonce’s should have easily repeated the “hat trick” trend. I, unlike my Post-Racialist friends, am not ready to simply write the offense off as a coincidence. Finally, the demonization of Kanye West by everyone from Perez Hilton to Barack Obama, leads me to my third and final elephant: societal priorities.
We are still fighting two wars. We are engaged in a major healthcare reform debate. Yet, Kanye West’s statement (I refuse to lay the negative connotation of “outburst” on his action) has taken front page press. When Joe Wilson yelled that President Obama was a liar, it did not receive anywhere near the public outcry as did Kanye’s statement. This problem I attribute to those whom I will call Tweeters. I won’t belabor this point, but It’s a sad sign for a country when celebrities or athletes (lest we forget about Serena Williams’ weekend) are held to a higher moral standard than our elected officials. There is an alternate explanation for this phenomenon (what I term the Perez Hilton Paradox). This alternate explanation, however, will upset my Post-Racialist friends. But for the sake of scholarship, let’s just say it involves the traditional image of whites in superior conditions to blacks, and so we are socially conditioned to the image of Joe Wilson questioning President Obama. In fact, some of us are confused as to why his statement wasn’t more of an imperative (i.e., “You stop lying boy”). But that’s a topic that has been semi addressed already.
I would be remiss to finish this without taking a serious look at the fact that Kanye West apologized to Taylor Swift…more than once. The apologies, Swift has stated were sincere, but it’s the apology on the Jay Leno Show that I want to look at a bit more. Jay Leno, in a very provocative moment, asked Kanye West what his mother would think of what he did and for the first time since the death of Dr. Donda West, Kanye West was forced to get off the rollercoaster ride that was his life and see the person he has become. When Dr. West passed, Kanye was hurt. When his fiancé left him shortly after, the world that he had known and appropriated had been snatched away from him and so he placed all of his heartbreak into the one place that was left, his music. Kanye West’s Heartbreaks led him to his 808s. Since the passing of Dr. Donda West, we have seem what happens when genius and pain cohabitate. We are given the gift of a great product (808s and Heartbreaks is in my eyes a classic because of its groundbreaking concept) but the curse of the tormented soul behind the product not being nourished. Once the 808s were turned off, the beating of the heartbreak persisted. Kanye West’s decision to take some time off is probably not ideal for Hip-Hop, but it is necessary for West. In order to retain the College Dropout, we must give him his Fall Break.
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