MTV reveals current truths about pop culture-like R Kelly's crazy.
For better or for worse, MTV still stands as a major influence on-and reflection of-popular culture, with all its subgenres and overarching themes, its implications, both blatant and subtle, its subtexts, be they essential, banal or both. Because of this, every year I look forward to the network's Video Music Awards, as both shallow spectacle and as a four-hour crash course in what's going on in the pop world today.
It would be easy to lambast the past decade or two of VMA's for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it was once a refreshingly unrehearsed mess, especially during the '80s but even spilling over to the early part of this century (like when Courtney Love chunked her compact at a visibly irritated Madonna), but now it's a sanitized mess, replete with heavily rehearsed moments specifically engineered to enter into our collective consciousness as pop culture moments. But, whatever. They are what they are. And they still work to give us an insight into the Zeitgeist. So, let's take a look at some truths we can glean from Sunday's extravaganza:
WHITE CULTURE IS OVER
For all its mainstream pandering, its obvious shallowness, its obsession with instant gratification, MTV has been instrumental in blurring the lines of race in America. Unlike that other great shaper of American culture, professional sports, MTV has often (though not always) proven progressive in the area of race. Progressive, in the sense that the network doesn't give a shit if you're black, white, red or green: If you're hot, you're hot. I keep thinking of a famous, if apocryphal, story about how certain members of the Dallas Cowboys' upper echelons swore the team would never have a black quarterback. They finally did for a little while, after almost four decades of white-helmed offenses, before he was booted off the team. By contrast, last Sunday MTV seemed more than happy to turn over the reins to the capable hands of emcee Puff…er, P Did…er, Diddy. Glance at the list of headliners-Common, Kanye West, 50 Cent, all black. Most of the VMA winners-Missy Elliot, West, Ludacris-were black. Krump dancing, a new frenetic dance style developed mainly by African-American dancers in Compton, took center stage for a segment. And Latin style was represented in a reggaeton jam with three of the genre's biggest stars, all from Puerto Rico.
By contrast, the most consistently cringe-inducing theme of the evening was the parade of vapid, blonde, aneorexic white starlets. Honestly, I had a difficult time figuring out who was who-Lindsey Lohan blended into Kelly Clarkson into Paris Hilton into Kirsten Dunst into Jessica Simpson. It seems white culture went into crisis mode, over-reacting to the point that its representatives had to embody Hitler Youth aesthetics in a desperate bid for attention.
This is not meant as one of those patronizing rants about how the culture of people of color is so much better than white culture. Not all the acts were good-Ludacris' set was lukewarm at best, for instance, and 50 Cent downright sucked. But it's clear that MTV is an apt barometer of changing tastes and demographics, and to some extent the recent VMAs indicate something: Perhaps white America is more comfortable with black idols; perhaps moguls like Diddy and Jay-Z are finally gaining control over their own destinies. Or perhaps, as the money rolls in, green is the new white.
MTV NEWS IS ALSO OVER
Back in the day, MTV News' Kurt Loder was the man we looked to to fill us in on the latest scoop about Duran Duran or Michael Jackson. He could cover the latest Prince album release with as much knowledge and aplomb as, say, covering the tour of the seminal LA punk band X. He knew all the release dates before anyone else. He was the man we turned to when Kurt Cobain shot himself, and Loder returned the trust by covering the story with compassion, knowledge and professionalism.
So it was kind of sad to watch Loder staring blankly into the eyes of his co-host, SuChin Pak, a dimwit at least 25 years his junior and boasting maybe half his IQ. Listening to Pak talk felt like overhearing two teenaged girls yammering at each other in the dressing room at the mall. Poor Kurt. His face was a grey mask of fear, confusion and repulsion. As Pak blathered on about bling and, I don't know, cell phone rings, I pictured Loder singing Sonic Youth songs to himself over and over in his brain so that his head wouldn't explode. He looked like someone who couldn't wait to just get home to his wife.
R KELLY IS CRAZY
The insane, bizarre highlight of the evening had to be the unveiling of R&B superstar R Kelly's final installment of his "Trapped in the Closet" song cycle. For those who aren't familiar with Kelly, the cycle, found on his latest album, is the loooooong, confusing saga of a love triangle, a saga he dramatizes through five narrative songs in which he plays all the parts. One of the main parts involves some guy hiding in a closet when his lover's husband comes home, initiating the sing-song refrain, "And I'm all up in the CLOSET…and I'm stuck here in tha CLOSET…and I'm lookin' out tha CLOSET." There is a companion video DVD, also featuring Kelly playing all the parts, in which he acts out each of the songs that make up the story. Sample lyric:
And I screamed look girl you better give me this man's name and I'm not playin wit you / She says okay, wipes her nose and asks me about a girl named Tina / I thought to myself, said it sound familiar / I said I probably know her if I seen her / Then I say anyway girl, what the hell does that got to do with this man / She said he know my girl Roxanne / I said who the hell is Roxanne / Then she says Roxanne's a friend of mine who know with this guy named Chuck / Chuck's cool wit this guy name Rufus...
Seriously.
In addition to this cast of characters, there also might be some sort of transsexual entity who counts as more than one person. It's hard to tell. Anyway, one of the special treats at the VMAs was the debut of the ultimate chapter of the song cycle, to be dramatically interpreted onstage by Kelly. Seriously.
When Kelly took the stage, a serious and strange look in his eye, I figured it was time to hit the TiVo because something insane-keep in mind, this is a man who has been indicted for having videotaped sex with a 16-year-old girl-was about to happen.
I was right. Kelly launched into his melodrama, starting from when he's all up in tha CLOSET. The song sounds less like an R&B hit written by a real live grownup and more like the nonsense tune of a small child sitting in the bathtub. There's something about a gun and Rufus and a cell phone, and Kelly jumped back and forth as a one-man show, playing three (or four? maybe five?) parts at once. It looked like some Gestalt exercise that should be confined to a therapist's office. Instead, it was out there in front of millions of Americans, not to mention Kelly's clearly stunned peers. It was a psychotic episode, an engrossing, sad and really entertaining spectacle-reflective, I fear, of where we're at as a nation.
