It's 1 AM on a Tuesday night and a gray Acura is coming up Telegraph Avenue: the smell of Taco Bell wafting through the car and Kanye blaring through the speakers; the woofer serving as the default heartbeat and Mr. West as default train of thought. Sheila Wagner is riding shotgun and she is steering the playlist. I ask her why exactly she is, “the biggest Kanye fan,” (her words, not mine) and she takes a couple moments to think while her head and body move according to beat and another bite of taco enters her mouth. She turns to the back and says, “There’s this quote I love where he says, ‘If you’re a fan of Kanye West, you’re not a fan of me, you’re a fan of yourself.’ He really just, motivates me and helps me believe in myself.’”
I recall that night as I think over a series of new, splashy events in Mr. West’s extensive and often exhausting career. In the past two weeks of traveling on his Saint Pablo tour, Mr. West has made major headlines by stopping mid-show at stops in Sacramento and San Jose, California on November 17 and 19, 2016, to announce that he had not voted, but if he had, it would be for President-elect Trump, deeply riling up the crowd. Soon after, he canceled the rest of his tour dates and was hospitalized on Monday, November 21, after the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a call and found a “medical emergency,” with reports that he suffered from a breakdown and potentially paranoia. After rebounding, he found himself once again under scrutiny for meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at his tower in New York City this past Wednesday. The still unfolding story and resulting discontent of his fans illustrate the increasing importance of personal ideology fused with identity, or, how audiences’ expectations for the media they consume is often at odds with their reality. We've seen this play out all year, with controversy after controversy rising up from the culture wars, from the Hamilton cast speaking out toward Vice President-elect Mike Pence, to the pastor of Chip and Joanna Gaines's church advocating for conversion therapy.
Throughout 2016, there has been a constant tension bubbling up between the so-called “elites” and everyone else, as well as between urban and rural communities. The backlash against celebrities has also been striking, and the case against Kanye has been no different, with commenters writing statements like, “Kanye is no political figure and should put up or shut up; he doesn't know anything." This is in stark contrast from fans like Sheila, who read every interview Kanye does and watch his performances and fashion lines. How has this tension continued to widen? Thanks to social media platforms, information continues to come out in a more divisive way, with personalized news feeds able to create a custom frame that pertains to one’s worldview. While news sources normally had at least somewhat of a variety of frames represented, custom news feeds are able to only show posts or articles that aligns with the personal worldview of the individual user, and framing of various issues, like Kanye’s recent outbursts, are largely uniform. Within this framework, these ideological silos illustrate how the controversial Kanye West can prove to be incredibly decisive, let alone the recent presidential election.
I checked back in with Sheila to get her take on the events of the past couple weeks. Still active in the hip-hop music scene and starting to develop her own musical career, she talked about how coverage was largely framed by the headlines that were set. For example, Twitter has a feature called Moments that is meant to congregate tweets from personal accounts of people who were at the event as well as articles from news sources, and one person tweeted about how Kanye supposedly said, “Build the wall, deport them all.” Sheila couldn't believe that Mr. West, or as he occasionally refers to himself, Yeezy, would say that, and investigated it to find that it was not true at all, and a fan site she follows talked to the original poster, who admitted that he wasn't actually there at the event and made up the quote. However, the quote was retweeted thousands of times and shared with legitimate news sources, and used to reinforce people’s political preferences, either by affirming what he said or disavowing his comments and refusing to listen to his music or support him. Sheila summed it up thusly: “Everyone’s so quick to assume and judge.”
Throughout 2016, artists have been lambasted on social media for speaking out about all kinds of topics. Beyoncé was crucified for supposedly "promoting an anti-police agenda" at the Super Bowl and "daring" to sing a country duet with the Dixie Chicks at the largely conservative-watched Country Music Awards last month. People were uncomfortable with artists like Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper talking about their faith, questioning their convictions or saying that they're "selling out." Artists that took a side or a stance on the election brought proclamations of people promising to "never listen to or watch them again." What, then, is the purpose of music if not to challenge? “I think it’s a chance for people to create art and put it out in the world,” says Lauren Lee, executive director of artist development at Kollaboration SF, a community group pushing for increased racial diversity in media. “When I listened to Life of Pablo…it was both terrifying and kind of interesting. I felt like I was listening into his psyche.”
A “use and gratifications” school of thought argues that audiences choose media texts like The Life of Pablo to learn about the world or about one’s self, understand their role in society or interact within it, and be entertained. Strong opinions that immediately resulted from fans draw from motivations that arise from a strong correlation between ideology with identity. In other words, the rate of polarization will continue to grow as people continue to remain in their social media-approved ideological silos. This hurts artists like West who intend to purposely shock and defy convention, and his actions suddenly become read not as a representation of who he is, but as part of a larger narrative that fits into audience’s preconceived notions of what an artist is supposed to be in terms of an audience’s eventual gratification. Although lauded for some of his past outbursts, seen as speaking truth to power, many feel that this is something different. This time, he is under a deluge of stress, from adding extra dates to the tour to living out the anniversary of his mother’s death to taking care of his wife Kim Kardashian, still recovering from being robbed in Paris nearly two months ago. As Sheila says, “He’s just another human, not this deity who’s untouchable, even from like…you know, mental health or stress.”
While that may sound strange coming from the man who wrote a song called “I Am a God,” this dichotomy of mental health and machismo has always been present in his work. In a surprise track called “I Feel Like That” on the video for his single “All Day,” he sings about the pain he feels, singing:
Do you feel tempered outbursts, that you cannot control? Feeling lonely, even when you are with people, feeling locked. Feeling a little sad, feeling disinterested in things, feeling fearful. Are your feelings easily hurt? Remember that people are unfriendly, or do you feel like people dislike you?
Social media and the tight control of images and text have gotten to the point where audiences expect media creators to have identities that are in line with their own personal ideologies, just like their custom framed news feeds. Deviations from that or any inkling that an artist or creator drifts from that preconceived partisan narrative results in a lightning rod of controversy, thanks to a public reluctance to investigate substance and get their news from short headlines and flashy, alarmist posts. Should we be talking about Kanye's meeting with our President-elect? Sure, but does it have to be so demonizing? This belief that media is a commodity that exists only for the audience’s gain boosts media use also sets a dangerous precedent by creating a false hope that artists will be able to conform to these digitally set worldviews that permeate what audiences see or choose to ignore and not allowing artists to be the flawed humans without 1s and 0s that they are, and not completely the narcissistic persona or musical genius we decided or wanted to see. In his final performance before his hospitalization, West ended the show by yelling out, “I’m not always gonna say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m gonna say how I feel." The crowd booed as his stage rose up in the air as if ascending toward heaven. Some were listening. Some were not.
Special thanks this week to the work of Ien Ang, Todd Gitlin, Justin Lewis, and John Robinson, as well as to Sheila Wagner (@sheilawagnersuperstar on Instagram) and Lauren Lee. Portions of this article were adapted from a longer treatise on how fans of Kanye West reacted to his recent rants and resulting hospitalization and how ideology is affecting identity.
