Was anyone else really put off by the VMAs? I was so uncomfortable. I don't know why. Okay, I know some of the reasons why.
But first, some backstory. I guess when you've been at college for 4 years, you forget that you're somewhat cut off from the outside world. I mean, I'm never really cut off from the outside world (b/c I am uncontrollably obsessed with pop culture), but if it doesn't happen in my Google Reader, then it doesn't always get through to me. And what with the whole micro-fame have-it-your-way nature of today's pop culture, it means I can have a database of information on who in the HRDC has made out with whom and which UCB performers have appeared in what commercials without knowing a thing about what's going on in Sudan or what the names of the characters in Twilight are (i know, i know, it's Bella and Edward... some of that shit makes it through). But then I came back from college. And suddenly I had cable TV again. And interacted with my 15-year-old cousin who listens to Z100 and weirdly enough, knows all the words to Third Eye Blind's "Jumper." (Apparently it's in the movie Yes Man...?)
When I was growing up, I used to watch awards shows like it was my job. But recently, I turned on the MTV movie awards and realized I didn't know who anybody was. So I turned it off. But yesterday at the VMAs, I knew who everybody was. I just didn't want to know who anybody was. It was a display of everything that's weird and fucked up about our culture.
The whole Taylor Swift-Kanye thing is perfect because Taylor Swift seemed like the only normal teenager-y thing about that night. Even though Taylor Swift is fucking gorgeous and it's bizarre that her hit song is about how she's a big nerd, she was the quintessential outcast in that show. She was like Dorothy in Oz or Alice in Wonderland getting led into a magical fairyland of crazy surreal shit. But instead of the Cheshire cat and the Wicked Witch, there's just like Gagas and Pinks flying from the ceiling and Russell Brand screaming and Kanyes stealing things from her and everyone is just bleeding and naked and shiny and horrifying. It was even just perfect how that whole story started and ended the night with the first and last awards. Beyonce is the Queen of Hearts but instead of cutting off Taylor Swift's head, she let her thank her younger brother's junior high school for letting her use their premises to shoot her adorable little music video.
It all just seemed so unscripted and bizarre with everyone just ranting and crazy. This is what Twitter and Facebook and reality television have done to our culture. Joe Wilson can just yell at Obama and Kanye can just take Taylor Swift's award because everyone assumes that everyone cares what they have to say about everything. We have no grace or dignity anymore. We can't keep our mouths shut ever. We just choose to one-up each other with how grossly exposed and open we can all be. Even the fact that I am fucking blogging in response to this should send myself a red flag for hypocrisy or post-irony or something, but it doesn't.
I'm withdrawing into my cocoon again, which isn't even that much of a cocoon because I consume more pop culture than most people I know and then surround myself with other people who consume that much pop culture so that I don't feel bad about myself (did I say pop culture? I meant alcohol j/klolz!). But seriously... there are 12-year-olds growing up on this shit. Someone save them. Someone save the Taylor Swifts of this world. They don't need this.
p.s. this is for ryder b/c i know if i had just said this to him instead of writing it down, he would have said "You should write a blog about it."
1 comment:
BLOG POST!
And so true. I think there's something deeper here that you're hitting on. A lot of articles now are talking about "the end of civility" with examples like Kanye and Serena and Joe Wilson -- they're all lamenting the fact that our society no longer demonstrates any decorum or restraint.
But I think there's more: with Twitter and reality TV and the kind of total real-time lifecasting with no self-censorship that we now engage in, there's an endemic lack of editing that's detrimental to our cultural product.
Everything comes out in its first iteration — nothing is thought through, reflected on, polished, and so it's all a big mess. It should be a positive thing that an awards show seems "unscripted," but it's actually upsetting because it's representative of our culture's complete lack of delineation between the spontaneous, what-happens-when-you-stop-being-polite-and-start-getting-real (i.e. Kanye jumping on stage and speaking his mind) and a product prepared with care (i.e. Taylor's put-together look and planned-out speech).
I was watching Seth MacFarlane and the rest of the Family Guy cast on Inside The Actor's Studio today, and there was an interesting audience question about how much of the shows were improvised by the cast. The answer: almost none. The jokes are tossed around and worked through in the writer's room, but the script is completely polished by the time they go to the recording studio.
Seth MacFarlane said something really insightful: when you're watching improvised comedy, it's thrilling and funny largely because you know it's on the spot. Tossing those jokes onto the pages of a script, though, won't result in as high quality material as a script that's been repeatedly and carefully vetted and improved.
But, in a careless Kanye culture where every thought gets unchecked expression in some forum or another -- be it a status update or a usurped awards show acceptance speech -- there's no separation of the wheat from the chaff. It's not just a lost of civility; it's a loss of care. What's left is just kinetic, frenetic noise.
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