30frames: 2009-10

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Lactose Intolerant

Like an infant burping up his dinner, the internet offers up new content and then it goes away – only to reappear on another site where Mommy comes in and wipes it off again.

The most recent one of the ‘watch this link before it goes away’ clips is the Kanye-Spike Jonze collaboration for ‘We Were Once a Fairytale.’ I gather this is a mini-movie and not technically a music video, but that hardly matters.

Kanye does some of the most interesting things in popular culture today – whether it is his wide-ranging blog, his ALL CAPS rantings or his awards show appearances. On that note, what do we want Kanye to do at the VMAs? In my mind we need him to act like the Lord of the Egos. Of course that is what ‘Ye is gonna do, that is his role. Did we want the 1989 version of Axl Rose to come to the VMAs and sit quietly in his seat like a good boy? No, we wanted Axl to swig from a bottle and make a messy fool of himself. In that vein, I praise Kanye’s lack of self restraint. Hooray for rock stars!

Kanye also does some of the most interesting videos. This clip with Spike certainly falls into the ‘I’m glad they made this’ category – even if it does go on a bit long. The link is below (or it was at the time of posting) so watch it and mind the spoilers.

‘Fairytale’ is a lengthy set-up with a pay-off that is both surprising and somewhat expected. I was a little bored by the end and the ‘twist’ was not really a shocker. The main problem was the eight minutes of the part leading up to that. In stand-up comedy, the phrase is ‘a long walk to the store’ – the kind of set-up than can render any punch line muted because the audience has ceased to pay close attention.

And the very end, where ‘Ye offers his inner furball a miniature knife, and I kept expecting the little guy to pull another internal tormentor out of his own miniature gut. The point of that (imagined by me) ending would have been, ‘All of us have us have our own demons,’ but the ending Spike and ‘Ye went with instead says, ‘Poor Kanye, it’s not his fault.’

On the other hand, I guess that re-twist I suggested may have been avoided to lessen the already inevitable comparisons to another ‘pulled out of the chest’ clip.