I know you’re all thinking I’m going to write about Kanye, but frankly, I can’t be bothered. He was drunk, it was stupid, the objective of saturated publicity was achieved, there’s nothing more to say. Except Kanye, genius or no genius, music fan or no music fan, is getting mighty tiresome – even Obama thinks he’s a jackass and that, my friend, is not what you want Obama to think you are.
But I will say this; it has been a huge week in the entertainment world; Patrick Swayze died, the VMAs … happened … Katie Price went public with the fact her rapist is a celebrity (police questioning has ensued), Serena had a brain snap at the US Open, Obama got leaked and Jessica Simpson’s dog got snatched by a coyote.
All in all, it has been a cracking week for stars to lose their shit (and their dogs, but lets focus on the former). And, thus, a big week for commentators, bloggers, journalists and the like, to fill column inches with Lady Gaga’s fake blood and Serena’s death threats. What was Gaga thinking, ‘dying’ in her performance when the event opened with a tribute to a fallen celebrity? How gauche. Kanye stomped on a kitten, the implications are endless (potentially racial?), Serena behaved like a spoilt brat, how dare she? … what’s the world coming to?
As someone who enjoys reading into things and then waxing lyrical about my findings, even I have to draw the line sometimes. For example, I stop short of seeing Gaga’s (very good) performance at the VMAs as inappropriate – certainly there was a connection between the song’s subject matter, the symbolism in the performance and the relationship between the media and Michael Jackson, who was honoured at the event, but that’s just clever and relevant, not dastardly and outrageous.
As the demand for constant news and information soars and the outlets multiply, the issue of feeding the beast is a big one – particularly when celebrities mess up. Because it’s not just one course the beast needs, it is constant snacks; new angles, fresh tips, bombshell revelations, sinister motivations. The bones need to be picked clean before the story is done with, consigned to archives and forgotten Facebook statuses.
So in the interests of keeping things real and because I cannot help but feel 90% of what we read is utter nonsense, here’s my take on the week’s biggest entertainment stories (save for Swayze’s passing, which has been handled as expected).
Kanye was drunk, is an egotistical attention seeker and once again became the talking point of an awards show. Mission accomplished?
Serena had a bad day, no one likes a foot fault call on match point and she lost a bit of control.
Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi deals with the deadly relationship between celebrity and the media. Ergo, in an astounding performance, she ‘died’. It was very good.
Barack Obama is a level headed human being who probably trusts sneaky ABC employees a little too much. But he was right about Kanye.
Here’s something we should be reading into and discussing in terms of the broader connotations it holds for our society – the furor over Caster Semenya’s gender, which is still going on, and still spoken of in terms of a witch hunt. Each little piece of information unearthed about this girl’s most intimate parts of her person, is waved aloft triumphantly as we struggle to shift our boundaries to fit her in.
Thoughts?
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Also, because it’s my favourite of the lot …
