Now, as Mama will tell you, I don’t like birds with broken wings; I like birds that have been run over by semi-trucks, multiple times. So here it goes: I think that everyone from Pink to the President to the media is being way too hard on Kanye West. (A) It’s the MTV Video Music Awards people. They are supposed to be crazy and in your face. They are not supposed to be nice or classy or anything else like that. It’s not the freakin’ Oscars or the ceremonies for the Nobel Laureates (pinkie swear I did not see a single member of the Swedish royal family at the VMAs). (B) Beyoncé did have the better video, even if I have my oh-so-P.C. doubts about the song. From a purely aesthetic perspective Kanye was right.
But I think reason “C” is by far the most important. As I have watched Kanye doing his mea culpa dance and listened to the commentary from all around, I have begun to wonder if there is not something more sinister lurking beneath this bubbly pop not-quite-a-firestorm. Maybe this is just another piece of evidence that post-racial America is still not here. I mean let’s put on our race-goggles here for a second and look at the incident: An African-American man in the hip hop industry publically told a very young, white female country western singer that her video was inferior to the video of an African-American woman. Now, Kanye West, said black guy, is the most evil, awful person on the planet and must carry out a protracted public apology. I don’t think so. I think he was Kanye West acting the way Kanye West acts in a questionably appropriate venue for doing so. I think he is being unfairly demonised. And I think it is because that the narrative of the black man as aggressor and white woman as victim continues to be a powerful story in our culture. This incident fits the model of that story and so we fell we know who each of the characters are.
For the record, it was jerky of him to do. Clearly Taylor Swift is not tough enough to tell him to get the hell off the stage (like I imagine many others would have done). It’s not right to pick on people who are not going to fight back. That being said, Kanye West is not evil or anything of the sort. He just said what everyone was thinking out loud at a rather jerk-y time to say it. That’s the actually story, but I am afraid we are listening to the old narrative instead.
1 response so far ↓
Lady G // September 17, 2009 at 2:03 pm |
That got me thinking of what would have happened if it had been someone like Eminem (or however he’s spelled) who had the outburst. (not that I think he ever would) I think there would have been just as much outrage, but I doubt that he would have done any apologizing for it. I’m not quite sure where that fits into your argument. But I think it has a spot somewhere.