Cleverly written song and great video.

This video is damn beautiful.

The video works because Kanye’s audience recognizes the modern/primitive binary and all that it implies. But, of course, it’s false. Psychological research (and, as far as I can tell, all of the research on voting behavior) demonstrates again and again that rationality is not our strong point as a species. If anything, what is modern is the inferring of rationality (hello rational choice theorists!), something that we see clearly in this video.

Actually, it’s false not because “rationality is not our strong point as a species”, but because in Western discourse, rationality/modernity is almost always associated with white anglo cultures, and primitiveness/ancientness is almost always associated with non-white cultures. Japan’s culture (Japan is a developed country and more technologically advanced than the U.S.) is still seen as having ancient/primitive aspects, while old Western/Christian superstitions about the number 13, knocking on wood, ladders, as well as those involving New Year’s Day, etc. are seen as “normal” and part of contemporary culture.

One thing I found interesting was the transitions between the primitive and the modern – very smooth and fluid panning shots. It made a smoother, more continuous connection between the two than if it had cut from the primitive to the modern abruptly.

Although the terrorism has much more complicated causes than just religion, it is the most obvious and easily to dismiss as emotional, interstitial and illiterate. And this is what the western world is doing.

However, I am interested why you used that particular example, not many others.

I mean seriously… could’ve been ground-breaking original and had females in the stomping army…

However, I’d also agree that I think West has a bit much nous to not be aware of the politics around the dichotomy … maybe not with quite as much awareness as the above post suggests (because I’d not want to be crediting Kanye West with TOO much intelligence, given his recent ‘performances’), but my reading of the video wouldn’t be that ‘rationality’ is the winner on the day. In fact, this video seems to very much pull on the romanticism that contemporary western culture views ‘the primitive’ with, as representing ‘our’ ‘real’ selves/emotions/psyches/etc etc. That romantic notion would seem to be what he’s drawing on here … and my summation would be that ‘we’ in the contemporary west have lost something by not being in touch with ‘our’ more ‘primitive’ selves. (I’m open to the possibility that he’s primarily addressing a black audience here, so I’m not sure whether ‘I’m’ included in that equation or not.)

Either that, or it’s just an excuse to have some pretty people wearing some cool stuff doing some funky dancing? It must be getting increasingly more difficult to make an original music video. Good work getting in the scantily clad sexy girls without actually having them in bikinis by a pool at a mansion in the Hollywood hills!