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Into the Kanye West

So apparently I’m too late and Spike Jonze has demanded that the entire Internet, and that includes Kanye, take down this video of “We Were Once A Fairytale,” his short film exposure of Kanye’s downward spiral into a hell of Yeezy’s own making, a place where Kanye can do nothing but play with the ruinous vestiges of his fame and indulge the swelling appetite of his infamy. The purpose of Spike’s copyright plea can only be that no one see the video, the Internet being the one place where most people will get to see the full thing. So what’s the deal? Why make a video then not let people watch it? If you’re one of the five Glow readers who hasn’t seen this beast already, let me just spell out the awful wonder of it all for you: Kanye stumbles around bars and clubs, trying to spit game and boasting over how “See You in My Nightmares” is his song, getting stoopid and then mistaking a pillow for a tryst, all culminating in a bathroom trip with some serious disembowelment. And I’m not talking shitting, though shitting is what Kanye does all over every moment of this fairly horrifying inlet into his psyche. Is Jonze’s removal request an attempt to protect us, maybe? Protect Kanye? Or himself? All of the above? You’re right, Spike, this shit is private.

Jonze adopts a rather off-hand approach to the shooting, everything murky and jumbled and akimbo. An impressionistic stupor, I suppose, sort of the opposite of the M83-ish clarionness with which Jonze had skateboarders literally deconstructing their urban environments. Here, the seedy world that Kanye has erected around himself controls him; he is a rat in his own maze. As for Jonze, I struggle to find a reference point for this video to any of his other work. Beyond the element of darkened fantasies it certainly has very little to do with Where the Wild Things Are, probably even less with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and virtually nothing to do with the Beastie Boys running around in bad wigs and cop glasses. I think the most obvious touchstone is actually the more esoteric work of David Lynch—the short films, Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Inland Empire—and in general the genre of film where you’re not even sure the filmmakers were looking through the camera.

In “We Were Once a Fairytale” the dead give-away that Jonze is aiming for the “batshit” side of insane comes in the aforementioned, climactic bathroom scene. First off, one way or another you’re in trouble if a bathroom scene can be described as “climactic,” but even in more trouble if said bathroom contains a curved dagger that must have been borrowed from the Prince of Persia set. You know what they say: a curved dagger is basically just foreshadowing for bowel-letting. In this case it’s also the tool by which Kanye extracts his spirit animal or furry parasite or child (replete with umbilical cord), after spewing from both his mouth and vivisected loins a bridal suite’s worth of paper rose petals—gore aestheticized/anesthetized into something out of the Guy Maddin school of design with more close-ups and less Vaseline on the lens. Also, Kanye’s inner self apparently looks like Rizzo the Rat as re-imagined by the Quay Brothers. Or, more likely, as re-imagined by KAWS.

But, man, what’s it all, like, mean? As a delayed pre-emptive strike in a post-“I’ma let you finish” world, it’s apparent from shot one of this video that Kanye’s decided to use his own ego as a punching bag, his id already reeling. At the conclusion of “We Were Once a Fairytale” this quest for psychotherapeutical self-immolation is elevated to a level of surreal posturing so unbearably conscious of itself, fucking “Moonlight Sonata” is playing. Which helps let us know that, hey, Kanye’s not just triumphantly exorcising some evil rodent demon that represents his ego and makes him do bad things. Plus, Ratye’s too cute and makes sad Bambi eyes when his papa silently urges him to kill himself with the miniature curved dagger that came packaged with the big one. Which, by the way, WTF.

But it’s okay, Kanye and Spike, this video should have been a private moment between the two of you (this is probably what a text message looks like in Jonze’s head), but I understand. Spike, you’re a talented guy and a good friend to your friends. Kanye, you’re a talented guy and a colossal fuck-up. And I do understand, Kanye, that being a fuck-up is your most prized artform, and now that you got past that whole “success” business you can share your heart’s true work on the largest platform you ever dreamt or nightmared of. You can make sure everyone sees how the thing inside you that you have to kill isn’t all bad, and it’s dear to you, and it’s gonna be just so goddamn tragic when it finally dies and all that’s left of you is a hollow shell of a man. Well, Ye, I know the club of love-hating Kanye West is big and chic and one that you’ve just been dying to join; congrats, man, because this video proves that you don’t need to join. You’re the founder and, guess what, you’re all the members, too! The rest of us? We were once a fanbase. Now we’re all illusions.

Chet Betz | 11/09/2009 |                

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