Kanyedeus

The pitch: Amadeus, but instead of Mozart and Salieri, it's Kanye and Taylor.

With the VMAs incident as its linchpin, follows the tortured genius and the hungry young popstar through their careers as their images become increasingly entwined, each one feeding off their hatred for the other even as it gradually destroys his/her image.

Okay, so that plays like a joke, but I genuinely think it'd make for a fascinating movie. Kanye and Taylor really do need each other. Kanye had already changed the face of rap prior to the VMAs incident, but he wasn't Kanye until he used the immense public backlash to "I'mma let you finish" to completely shed his former persona, transforming into a ball of jaw-dropping talent and staggering insecurity and in the process producing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, since hailed as the Sgt. Pepper of rap. Taylor, meanwhile, had also encountered decent success, but it was the zeitgeist of having Kanye West shove her away from the microphone that pushed her into the superstardom that she would never lose.

The whole thing happened all over again, in much more bizarre form, with the increasingly convoluted series of backstabs that unfolded in 2016–2018. Kanye and Taylor make up. Kanye releases The Life of Pablo, which includes the infamous lyric about possibly banging Taylor now that he's "made that bitch famous." Taylor cries outrage and wins Album of the Year. Kanye is dragged for being a heel, ensuring his name stays in the spotlight for the expanded release of TLOP. Then Kim jumps into the mix with audio evidence that proves Taylor has been slandering Kanye and actually signed off on that lyric. Then Taylor releases an absolutely baffling attempt at course-correction with "Look What You Made Me Do," a paranoid screed of a song that attempts to lean into her bad-girl image while falling on its face. THEN Kanye goes full Trump stan, burning pretty much all the bridges he had left but also blowing his name up once again, and Taylor, who's previously been apolitical to the point of refusing to condemn neo-Nazi fans of hers, suddenly decides to endorse Democratic candidates.

Whew.

These two terrible, terrible people will never be rid of each other, and now that they seem to have embraced that truth and started to escalate things, it's only going to get weirder. We can argue about who's the better artist or the better person (personally, love Kanye's music and think he's a dangerous idiot, hate Taylor's music and think she's a sociopath), but at the end of the day you can't have one or the other. You've gotta take both.

So, movie. A fragmented tale of musical sadomasochism, genius and jealousy, and the last genuine Celebrity Feud in an age that's given less and less to pop-cultural monoliths.

Kinda want to write the thing.

Last edited by Abbie (2018-11-15 20:50:40)