What do Kanye West & "Nope" Have in Common? Spectacle.
Right, wrong or indifferent, we simply cannot look away...
We’ve had more than 72 hours to decompress from the latest Kanye West meltdown, right? A short recap of recent Ye transgressions includes the Fox News interview, White Lives Matter merch at PFW, and a very (un)healthy dose of antisemitism. Outside of his fans, most of us are starting to wonder: how does this guy still have an audience? (at this very moment, the rapper has 18.2M Instagram followers) It would stand to reason that when people do bad things, we shun them. But in practice? That’s simply not true.
And that’s because human beings love (eh, kind of…more on that later) spectacle. The more negativity, the better.
We truly do. You know the old idiom, “it's like watching a train wreck. You don't want to stare, but you can't look away?” Whether it’s simple morbid curiosity or a distraction from our own lives, we just love a good show. And that’s where Nope comes in; the 2022 horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele was, to me, incredibly rich in both complex narratives and themes. Besides animal abuse and the exploitation of Black creatives, the theme of “spectacle” was explored in many different ways.
And I think it’s really great insight into the why and what of the ongoing train wreck that is Kanye West and why we’re still tuning in.
A Train Wreck You Can’t Look Away From; A Rapper You Can’t Tune Out
This is not the first time West, who legally changed his name to “Ye” in October 2021, has…well, gone off the rails (no pun, intended). Many point to the 2007 death of his mother, former educator Donda West along with his diagnosed bipolar disorder, as catalysts for his increasingly erratic behavior over the years. In 2009, he hopped on stage at MTV’s Video Music Awards to interrupt singer Taylor Swift as she accepted the “Best Female Video” award; Ye stated that Beyoncé, who was nominated in the same category, was more deserving. Over the years, he has tweeted that serial rapist Bill Cosby was “innocent,” publicly campaigned for $1 billion in capital from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and turned into a MAGA Trump supporter. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
These past incidents haven’t really had a negative impact on Ye’s career, either; on the contrary, in 2013 he signed with German athletic juggernaut Adidas, and in 2015 they expanded their partnership after his Yeezy Boosts broke sales records. He has a successful gospel choir, and recently had a presentation for his fashion line, YZY SZN 9 (where he wore the infamous “white lives matter” shirt). Along the way, Ye has continued to release music to both critical and commercial acclaim (his 2021 album, Donda, debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for the coveted AOTY Grammy—Ye later asserted that the album was released without his approval).
The truth is, the Chicago-born rapper and producer still commands an audience, and it’s not just his loyal fans. And it doesn’t matter if he’s making music or incendiary remarks about the history of chattel slavery in America; when Ye is the topic? People tune in and we can’t seem to tune out.
Maybe She’s Born With It; Maybe It’s Our Built-In Negativity Bias
[Warning: if you have NOT seen Nope…why not? But also, there are spoilers ahead]
About three-quarters of the way through Peele’s Nope, after the carnivorous alien regurgitates blood on the childhood home of stars Keke Palmer (Em) and Daniel Kaluuya (OJ), and an entire crowd of people is eaten at Steven Yuen’s (Jupe) live show, a man on a motorcycle shows up. With a camera firmly attached to his arm, he prods Em with questions, hoping to get the juicy scoop on Jean Jacket (the alien). He’s later killed; but as he lies dying, he asked OJ not to save his life, but rather to try and capture the supernatural phenomenon.
All that matters is the shot.
And that’s kind of Nope in a nutshell; the entire plot centers around the main characters’ prime objective: capture and exploit the terrifying alien creature that inadvertently caused their father’s death. Peele revealed in press interviews that humanity’s obsession with spectacle was at the heart of his script:
Why do we have to see anything? Why do we rubberneck at an accident? Why do we have to open our social media and see the worst thing in the world every morning…It’s something in human nature.
He’s not wrong. We have known for years that negative headlines perform better than positive ones. Even common sense tells us this (bad news travels fast, and all that) and there’s a reason for that: psychologists call it the “negativity bias.” In short, it is a cognitive bias that results in negative events having a larger, more long-lasting impact on us. Essentially, we feel negativity more deeply, and our brains are more alert and interested in negative events; not because we like them, but because our brains have to work harder to process them. It’s a very strange human flaw to make positivity so simple and…well, boring, don’t you think?
Peele takes it a step further and marries our interest in negativity and spectacle with humanity’s other love: wealth, “our connection with spectacle and money, and our monetization of spectacle.” Capturing the predator alien is a means to an end for Em and OJ; within minutes of discovering Jean Jacket’s existence, Em decides that they should sell its likeness, and get the “Oprah Shot.” Money wasn’t just the objective for Motorcycle guy—Jupe, OJ, Em…they all wanted a piece.
Where Does The Ye Train Stop? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just like people still want a piece of Ye. He was recently featured in an episode of Drink Champs, an internet talk show and podcast hosted by rapper N.O.R.E and record industry insider DJ EFN, and produced by Revolt TV (rap mogul P. Diddy’s network). Shocking absolutely no one, Ye made some pretty interesting remarks; one of which was asserting that the death of George Floyd, who was murdered by former Minneapolis law enforcement in 2020, was linked to the highly dangerous drug Fentanyl. It’s important to note that this is 100% untrue and Floyd’s death was ruled a homicide. Years ago.
Co-host, N.O.R.E, born Victor James Santiago Jr., however, didn’t seem too concerned about Ye’s factual incorrectness when he tweeted:
He’s since offered a sort of lukewarm apology (perhaps after Floyd's family attorney threatened legal action), but what good is that? He, and everybody involved in the production, were well aware of what could possibly be said during that interview. It’s a risk they were willing to take, and depending on who you ask; it paid off. Ye’s episode has amassed close to two million views on Youtube in less than 24 hours.
That’s the other key component when it comes to spectacle; it’s gotta be able to hold people’s attention. In case you haven’t noticed, attention is in short supply these days and Ye has over 20 years of attention-grabbing cache to his name. And most of it is bad. But he’s OK playing the villain, and who doesn’t love to hate the villain? Ye has given us over a decade of unified, “is he insane?” A singular experience of all hating the same thing.
Is that what Ye is doing? In a time when we’re more divided than ever, is Ye serving himself as the sacrificial lamb to unite us so we can move forward as a country?
Eh, probably not. It’s more likely that money, success, a legion of adoring fans and a God complex are fueling this train wreck—to what end? None of us can say for sure.
More importantly; at what point are we all going to look away?