As a result though, I'm kind of taking some time away from studying, and I thought I'd weigh in on a bit of pop culture in the only way I know how: as it relates to Kanye West.
About two weeks ago, Kanye released this music video for Bound 2. It takes about four seconds to find someone ridiculing it and Kanye (mostly Kanye) just about anywhere on the internet. I'd imagine you can find some deleterious commentary about it in even the comments section of a rhubarb pie recipe at allrecipes.com. Kanye, as is nothing new, became the internet's horse of the moment, and everyone wanted a ride- if not to go anywhere, at least to use the whip.
Knowing Kanye as I do (which is not at all personally- just as a closely studied auteur, from afar), he's probably taking it very personally, or attributing it to jealousy. I'm not sure it's either really: I think it's, literally, a lack of education (or at least the right kind of education) on the part of anyone who criticizes it.
That is not to say that you have to like it- I'm not sure I do. But I am saying you can't just watch it and understand it, especially if you majored in math at a state school and work at Wal-Mart. Or worse.
You see, Kanye's video for Bound 2 does nothing less than show that he is not just years, but decades, centuries, millennia ahead of the pop culture world.
Some facts you need to know: Bound 2 is the last song on Yeezus. Yeezus is essentially Kanye's Finnegan's Wake at this point- it proves more that he can do it than that anyone will enjoy it. I do enjoy it, but more for what it is than how it sounds...very much like Finnegan's Wake.
Another fact: Hip-Hop is, and has been, necessarily post-modern since its inception. It is an art form driven by collaboration and individuality, celebrated not for individual accomplishment as uniqueness: there's a relatively fine line in this area, between modernism and post-modernism. The difference is based on the emphasis. In modern times (the 40s, roughly, for instance), we celebrated what individuals achieved. In post-modern times, we celebrate that they are individual. Hip Hop started doing this while Led Zeppelin was still fighting for radio plays because white executives were unwilling to risk jumping format. It's not just the music (though that's the biggest part- were it not, ODB would not be famous-- he's not the best, but he's unique)-- it's the dance, the DJ, the MC. Hip-Hop is a tapestry, and was eons before that became a cool thing to be.
But post-modernism does not stop there (actually, it does not start there- hip-hop has simply expressed post-modernism through celebrating individuality). Post-moderism is, as an ethos, the decentering of all things: values, expectations, reality as we know it. It is founded and has its form in the (far more honest but much less workable) notion that we use centers because we think we need them, but they do not actually exist.
Kanye famously dropped out of college- but his entire career has and does embody that notion. From the start, he couldn't get a deal as a rapper because people viewed him as a producer. Now, he wants to be an architect, to design clothes, etc.: but he can't, because people view him as a rapper. His entire career has been defined by others, clinging to their personal center of classification: "producers can't rap/rappers can't design clothes" and on and on. But there is nothing necessarily true about that. Nothing at all.
Bound 2 is a straight perpetuation of expectation-shattering Kanye at his best. It is the last track on Yeezus. Other famous last tracks include A Day in the Life by the Beatles, Freebird by Lynyrd Skynard, All You Need is Love, etc. It's the epic sum-up, the happy note, the grand finale. Bound 2 is anything but. It's one of the least serious, most ridiculous songs Kanye has ever released. Its very structure breaks expectations with the "ah-ha honey" cutting in at all the "wrong times." Its a song that barely sounds like more than a smattering of unfinished work. I still like it, because it's largely Kanye's way of saying that he can make even the dumbest crap in the world sound good.
And then- the music video: it takes that very song and applies it to something that's supposed to feel epic: the monstrous long shots, the horses, the open fields. The song does not "fit" at all. What's more, when it actually shows Kanye rapping, he's just standing in a poorly lit medium shot, rapping and doing stereotypical rapper hand movements. There's no plot to the video whatsoever. The song is not where it "should" be on the album, it's not even what a song "should be" from one of the most successful artists of our day. To top it all off, it features the comically suggestive motorcycling/sex action with naked Kim Kardashian.
Whether he realizes it or not, the motorcycle portions are the most subversive: he's Kanye, the most ridiculed man in white America, clearly having a relationship with a woman that (as annoying as keeping up with the Kardashians is) most American men would rank, from a pure looks standard, among the most beautiful. But Kanye has her. And he does not just have her, he is running away with her, on his motorcycle, and rapping loudly while he does it. Could much more enrage stereotypical white America further? The loud, rich black man, running away with a beautiful white woman: and, not just any white woman, but the daughter of a man who got OJ Simpson off for allegedly murdering a white woman?
The anti-misegenation crowd is quiet these days, but a vast portion of American men still cringe a little, when they see a beautiful white woman with a black man-- to the point that they make jokes about it. It just "looks unnatural" I've often heard, as if that makes it okay. But that's really the point of Kanye: it only looks unnatural because you insist that anything is natural.
Bound 2 breaks all sorts of unwritten rules, and it takes hip-hop to the next level on the post-modern spectrum. You don't have to enjoy it to realize that. Generally though, I suspect that the internet does not realize that- nor even attempt to. Though I probably strive to see the best in Kanye first (because that's such a crime...seeing the best in someone...), it's almost an unwritten rule amongst white-interneters that Kanye=ridiculous, and so does everything he does. It's a lie though, a lie rooted in ignorance, and perpetuated by it. Whether he realizes it or not, Kanye is a consummate artist who pushes boundaries so we can all see that there are no boundaries. That's the conclusion of my IS: if we don't take time to let ourselves get decentered by art, we never give ourselves a chance to look beyond our parochial worldview. It's not that Kanye breaks rules. It's that there are no rules.
So Seth Rogen can parody all he wants- he's just playing to the crowd. Too often, the very post-modern social networks of today allow us to remain a monoculture, because we are subject to intense and instant group-think. If you can create the funniest meme the fastest, you get to be celebrated. IF you can't, you're trolled. That's pitiful modernist activity if its ever existed.
Kanye is creating art. We are, unfortunately, as a society, literally too uneducated to realize it. If something isn't how we think it ought to be, we ridicule it. If something isn't how we think it out to be, we find a way to ignore it. The great irony is that, in all of this, we'll have nothing but a bunch of misinformed snide comments to show for it. Kanye, however, will have done his part to change the world (as crazy as that might sound).
By writing this, I hope I am too.
-Zack
