That being said, I first heard about the Kanye West at the VMAs thing because apparently President Obama made an offhand comment about it off the record. It seems like an amateur mistake, but we have to remember that the man has two young daughters who probably keep up with this stuff like it's their job, so he's going to be exposed to some of it and probably have thoughts about people's behavior. Besides, everyone should have a few minutes at work to goof off and lighten things up a bit, even the leader of the free world.
Getting back to the topic, I heard that the President was getting a lot of flack for even weighing in on the topic, then I saw the clip of Kanye's impromptu, self-invited declaration. I later came across clips of both Taylor Swift's video (which she won an award for) and Beyonce's video (which she did not win for) and developed my own opinion:
Beyonce's Video:
Clean, classic, interesting dancing, and a fun song. I especially liked how Beyonce didn't stand out that much from the other two dancers in the video. I think that was an interesting artistic choice on the part of the choreographer and director. The video was nice, but not overly impressive and definitely not the best video of all time as proclaimed by Kanye West.
What's more, music videos are rarely pieces of art anymore. I remember up to the early '90s videos were sometimes extremely poignant and often absolute masterpieces. The cliche examples of this are Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" (for poignant) and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (masterpiece). Today not only is it hard to even find a music video on MTV, but when they are played most of them are annoying or just cheap garbage productions.
Taylor Swift's Video:
I do not like Taylor Swift's music. I find her lyrics to be decidedly anti-feminist and degrading to teenage girls. Her lyrics suggest that girls' happiness and self-worth should be based on whether their crush notices them. "Teardrops on My Guitar" is just disgusting all around and the "He Belongs with Me" song isn't much better because it suggests that the typical Alpha female type in high school is the only girl who will get noticed. I don't know about the rest of you, but many girls I knew in high school, including myself, wore t-shirts and sneakers and did just fine in terms of dating. However, Taylor Swift is just a teenager and seems like a nice girl so I try to not judge her too harshly. Plus it's very likely that she has little to no control on her songs or image because she's an American Idol with a contract akin to indentured servitude.
As for the video, I don't know why it won. It was pretty cliche and nothing interesting happened. In fact, Beyonce's very vanilla video kept my attention more than Taylor Swift's video could ever hope to. In all they were both really unimpressive so who knows what all the fuss is about.
Kanye West:
Unlike Taylor Swift, I really like Kanye West's music. He's is extremely talented without question and he is being rewarded handsomely for his artistic efforts.
However, my above comments regarding these music videos and their artists' abilities have absolutely no bearing on my opinion of Kanye West's behavior. Taylor Swift could have won in spite of having the worst video ever made and I would still agree with President Obama that Kanya West behaved badly and is a "jackass." In fact, there's an entire website devoted to expressing how big of a douchebag Kanye West is.
Besides what Kanye said in public, on stage, on TV, in front of Taylor Swift and Beyonce (who looked horrified), he also had a total meltdown backstage claiming that MTV never let's him win awards that he seems to think he is entitled to and they never pick the right winner. He even claimed that MTV won't let a "black man" win, which is just plain stupid.
Kanye West, you fail realize that 1) awards ceremonies are supposed to be fun and should not be taken so seriously, 2) it is an honor to be nominated at all, winning is just an extra bonus, 3) you picked on and embarrassed a girl who is half your age in front of millions of people, 4) your mother must be humiliated, and 5) you are not entitled to win every award just because you think you are better than your peers.
You are a sore loser and a big baby. I haven't seen temper tantrums like yours since grade school and those kids didn't have any friends because they always ruined it for the rest of us. You are setting a bad example for young people in constructively dealing with adversity.
Grow the fuck up, seriously.
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