Artistically speaking, I more or less like Kanye. I like his unfiltered and raw lyrics, I believe that yes, “we the new slaves” and even his highly-criticised rants don’t really bother me; I think those rants make him more “human” than “crazy”.
When I saw his recently deleted tweets this morning, which basically said that Get Out is based on him, I was startled, I was sad. As a person who adores conspiracy theories and wouldn’t put anything past the adrenochrome junkies of LA, I immediately believed what I heard. I started digging deep into this newly found theory, this new and shiny escape from the reality of my everyday life.
I’m not saying that all conspiracy theories are just escapades for common people to hold onto in order to make things more interesting, in order to find just a tiny piece of comfort in this widely, widely unknown world (on second thought, this is exactly what I’ll be saying). Crafting these theories gives us comfort, gives me comfort, because it makes me feel as if I know something. When in reality, we don’t really know anything which is so hard to accept without feeling lost and insignificant. I still don’t think that all conspiracy theories are wrong nor crazy, mainly because I believe it would be too naïve to believe that we are given the whole truth about everything (Truth is power and power is liberation. You don’t give that kind of power nor the liberty to things you want to have control over, you only give them a carefully crafted illusion of these.)
I don’t know if Get Out is really based on Kanye and I don’t know if Britney Spears is really a “slave” (though, I mean, who isn’t a slave, really?). But I know now that these “pop” conspiracies are there to distract us from the real debate, they are here to numb us (and maybe a part of us already knows that, maybe the world is sometimes too much to take in and a part of us needs to be drugged down in order to cope).
Get Out is a movie that perfectly deconstructs racism and cultural appropriation, it is a strong movie that opens a crucial debate. To take that kind of representation (of black people, of minorities, of people who’ve been silenced, whose voices have been stolen) and make it about a modern rapper with a 1.3 billion net worth is fucked up. Kanye might be suffering, and Get Out might represent him in a way; but that’s actually not important at all. I know and believe that all kinds of suffering is suffering and pain shouldn’t be hierarchized but I mean, should we really be talking about paper cuts while people are bleeding out from lethal wounds?
Why are we feeling sad for Kanye, when we should actually be feeling sad for ourselves? Or if we have such a huge heart and such an altruist soul, why aren’t we helping the homeless man next door instead of someone who doesn’t even know we exist, someone that we know we can’t possibly even reach? Why are we worrying so much whether or not Britney is a “slave”, while there is still human/child trafficking going on, when there are ACTUAL slaves, here, in this world, in 2020?
Why don’t we focus on the pain we can actually heal, instead of tweeting about the ones we’re not even sure about? Or are we all tweet and no action?