I Got My MTV

So the MTV Music Video Awards were last night. I am twenty-three years old, which is younger than most of the artists nominated, but older than most of their target audience.


I will be the first to admit I don't totally understand youth culture. I don't think anyone does, including but not limited to youths them(our?)selves. But as of recently I love pop music, and I knew all the artists nominated for the VMA's for the first time since 2000, so I watched them. And I forgot what an incredible shit show the VMA's are. This year was no disappointment, rife with divas (Kanye), weirdos (Lady Gaga), and sporadic poignancy (Janet).


Without further ado, some observations from the night. I didn't tweet them, I promise.


--Sway hasn't aged a day (or changed his hat) since I stopped watching MTV almost ten years ago. Props to him.


--Pink and Shakira showed up in the same dress. Shock and horror! Whatever, they both looked great (though if I had to answer a People poll I'd probably vote for Shakira, mainly because I personally want to do her.)


--Madonna spoke about Michael Jackson and it was mainly sweet and a little bit weird and awkward, which is somehow fitting for him. She called him a hero, and for MTV, he definitely was. I don't know yet how I feel about her subtle accusation that we killed him; she might be right but she might be displacing. Maybe it's both and I just feel guilty for loving young Michael, knowing what the life did to him.


--Kanye West made a damn fool of himself as usual, by not only interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech to rant about how Beyonce deserved the Best Female Video moon man, but by ripping the award out of the nineteen year old girl's hands just as she began to tearfully thank her largely pop-oriented fans for making her dream come true and giving a country singer a chance.
There are several things wrong with this:
1 - Taylor Swift is nineteen years old. Give her a break.
2 - It's a freaking MTV moon man. It means a lot to Taylor Swift because she's brand new to the business, she's MTV's almost exact target audience, and it's her first, but it really doesn't mean anything to anyone else, especially Beyonce. Save your soapbox and give the girl her moment.
3 - This was clearly less about Beyonce and more about Kanye's unflinching need to be the center of attention at all times, and the fact that the amount of time it took to talk about female artists was just too long for him to bear.


--Lady Gaga is a nut and I love her for it. She arrived on the red carpet with Kermit the Frog (he says it's not serious), changed costumes several times throughout the night, hung herself onstage, and dedicated her Best New Artist moon man to "God and the gays." More pop stars could use a sense of humor; that's why I prefer hip hop.

--Janet Jackson danced alongside her 100-foot brother in a hastily thrown-together tribute to the King of Pop. That's just beautiful. And really, really sad. And every time I see Joe Jackson's mug I'm reminded of the fact that, no matter our differences, everyone in the world can at least agree on the fact that Joe Jackson is a great big tool.


--Beyonce proved herself to be a beautiful, classy, professional lady and used her Best Video of the Year acceptance speech time to let Taylor Swift finish hers. I can't always agree with the message of her songs, but that was the best possible thing she could do to alleviate a lot of tension, give poor Taylor Swift her moment in the glitter, and distance herself from Kanye's great big mouth. Brava.


So there it is. There actually isn't much about the infamous award show that is different from the way I remember it a decade ago; some of the names have changed and there's a lot more tweeting involved. But the VMA's are clearly still the crazy, glittery, overwhelmingly classless, randomly sweet, earnest hot mess they always were, which is somehow comforting in this unstable world in which we live.


And I'll be listening to a lot of NPR today to make up for it, I'm sure.

Grisly Girl Power, or How I Became a Fan of Lady Gaga

So Lady Gaga's newest video, "Paparazzi," has been leaked.

The eight minute mini-movie opens with an easily too-long make out scene between the Lady and Alexander Skarskard, which quickly turns into a dangerous shoving match on the balcony as he tries to force her into a prime photographing position for the hidden pap. She falls to the cement below and the song begins as she is wheeled onto the red carpet with jeweled neckbrace and crutches in tow. The rest of the video is awash with a grotesquely fascinating mix of hyper sexual glitz and stylized, macabre flashes of young women splayed out in what one must assume are fame-related deaths, ending in Lady Gaga's casual murder of Alexander

Skarskard. As she is carried away in handcuffs, newspapers with headlines like "She's Back!!!" and "We Love Her Again!" fall around her, and the mini-movie ends with her mugging for the police camera.

For someone who is widely regarded as a pop-princess, I'd say that's pretty heavy. And it works.

What fascinates me about Lady Gaga is her armor. As a casual observer, I have never once seen her eyes unmasked by thick bangs, layers of eyeshadow, and false eyelashes. And though, as one YouTube observer so eloquently put it, "does lady gaga beleive in pants cuaes in every music vid shes wairing a bathing suit," she only ever shows her hips, butt, and thighs, which are provocative but at this point in music video history not at all intimate. Every emotional, telling part of her body (ie shoulders, collarbone, neck, face) is almost always covered by several layers or exaggerated fashion features, most famously those face-covering sunglasses or wing-like shoulder padding.

Her most sexual features are often prominently displayed, especially in this video, but in a "look, don't touch" kind of way. At least half of her dancers are male, and yet she never dances with them in a way that makes her the subservient or weaker partner. She is always dominant;

she is always in control. This is what makes the beginning of the mini-movie so frightening, as she lets down her guard to be with this guy and her cue to begin panicking is when he pushes her onto the balcony ledge and asks her, "Do you trust me?"

The flashes of the bodies of the dead girls are set against the main chorus, "I'm your biggest fan/I'll follow you until you love me/papa, paparazzi," giving the whole video a creepy, unsettling vibe. Necessary, though, to get her point across.

Lady Gaga clearly owns herself, her body, and her art. She is over the top and caricatured, but in this she gives herself the freedom to express herself and be seen in the way she chooses to, not the way the pap, or anyone else, might paint her.