Here at Street, we rejoice in reaping the rewards of artistic ambition. Sometimes those rewards are a bit, well, hard to figure out. Over the past two or so weeks, we’ve been digesting Kanye West’s recent (for lack of an established term) music–movie, Runaway, which tells a story set to several of his songs. Before being able to analyze what this film means for music, we had to figure out what the hell was even going on. Below, we’ve made two columns that summarize the movie. The first one (below left) is a brief plot summary, and the second one (below right) is a collection of moments that made us ask, “WTF?” As you’ll soon see, that seems to be Runaway’s guiding question. Read on to find out that you weren’t alone in being puzzled by the incorporation of a giant Michael Jackson head.
PLOT:
1. The movie opens with a shot of an unidentified object shooting down from the heavens through a burnt–red sky. Kanye just happens to be driving through this forest, and discovers that the mysterious object is…
2. …a (really hot) phoenix! After nursing her back to health from her big fall, Kanye begins teaching her the ways of modern American life. Naturally, he teaches her to dance. After this, he’s ready to…
3. …take her as his date to a dinner party (which is for some reason in a large warehouse)! Dinner seems to be going smoothly until the waiter serves a turkey for dinner, at which point the phoenix flips a shit. Awkward. All this potential cannibalism gets Kanye and the phoenix in the mood for …
4. …some BS philosophical discussion! Phoenix: “Statues are phoenixes turned to stone… Do you know what I hate about your world? Anything that is different, you try to change. You rip the wings off the phoenixes.” Kanye disagrees, and then makes love to her. After this…
5. …in an act of what some (read: just Kanye) see as brilliant artistic symmetry, the phoenix returns, after her 35–minute stint on earth, to wherever it was she came from. Fin!
WTF: 1. Peep Kanye and gf looking on, awestruck, as this parade of fireworks, Redcoats and Klan members (?) make their way past them. Not to mention the stilt–walkers or the enormous Michael Jackson head… Kanye, we get it, you are a pyromaniac and want to take the theoretical torch from Jackson. But seriously, WTF?
2. Post–dinner fail (you’d think at a dinner party they would’ve asked if anyone had any dietary restrictions) and underwhelming ballet choreography, this artistic image features hottie phoenix girlfriend chilling with a sheep in West’s backyard. Bestiality is always cool, as is having sheep in your backyard. Obviously a sheep is the new pimp goblet.
3. In this image we may never know why Kanye is passed out and seemingly waiting for a chalk outline to encircle his body. What we can say is that we love Kanye’s loafers and it’s a shame that the sheep gets cut out of the frame as the camera pans to Kanye’s body.
4. Coming to a visual climax, Kanye presents us with a deer. Again, the point is clear: Kanye is obviously protesting for bestiality rights.
5. After the film's eighth explosion, the phoenix ascends back to where she came from. The disappointment and “WTF!?” sentiment here is that Selita Ebanks, the phoenix, has a Madonna–esque metal plating covering her chest — why, in the last seconds of the film, would Kanye hide this BEAUTIFUL sight?
CONCLUSION “First rule in this world, baby, is don’t pay attention to anything you hear in the news,” the first bit of dialogue in Runaway, is delivered as emotionlessly as the lines that follow. And with this line, perhaps you should take this article with a grain of salt, as the only true way to enjoy Runaway is in this fashion. Because, let’s be real, Kanye is the only one who could find producers willing to sponsor his every mental masturbation. Yet his collaboration with Hype Williams (director of videos from Jay–Z to Christina Aguilera and back to Coldplay) only produces amazing cinematography and awful dialogue. On the one hand, while images of sheep and bunnies, along with the plot of a phoenix girlfriend are “unique,” and the accompanying imagery is entertaining, the short film does get visually stale and often boring. Furthermore, rather than questioning the “deep sentiments” Kanye attempts to weave throughout the music–movie, one must question Kanye himself (Hence, WTF, above). But, despite the fact that Kanye’s attempt to set himself as next in line to Michael Jackson's throne is consistent with West’s egotistical personality, this film sampler of Kanye’s next album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy successfully whets the appetite for more — music that is. Some may call Kanye an ambitious, artistic genius, and while he may just be ridiculous, one must wonder whether this experimentation into a new media and new marketing strategy for his upcoming album will become the norm for musical powerhouses. And while in the end of the music–movie Kanye’s phoenix girlfriend returns to the sky, it doesn’t seem that Kanye himself will be returning to his planet anytime soon.
