I think not. There was nothing beautiful about the VMA’s this year. In fact, they were quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. Poor Timbaland (he produced this one…). He certainly won’t be adding this one to his long list of accomplishments.
The show started with a lackluster performance by the dethroned Pop Princess herself — Britney Spears. By the looks of it, alcohol and drug abuse can do more than just make young starlets do outrageous things; it also makes them forget how to dance and sing! Britney’s long years of dance training and video-move making both seem to have gone out the window. Not only was her choreography washed out and uncreative (think one body roll after the next…), but she performed them with the energy, confidence, and enthusiasm of someone who just knows they fell off. Britney couldn’t even get it together enough to match her lip syncing to the wording of the song. Not even her black leather-wearing backup dancers could save the performance. They too seemed lost and confused on stage. This was a long cry from Britney’s raved about “Slave For You” VMA performance several years back.
But it wasn’t just Britney. They whole show was a disaster. First of all, where were all of the celebs? Even Fergie was MIA. Apart from Diddy, Beyonce, and Eve, the biggest star there was Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls.
Enough said.
The entire concept for this year’s VMA’s left a lot to be desired. Even though the stars throwing their own individual suite parties seemed to be having a heck of a lot more fun than the celebs with front row seating at the awards show, the whole ”suite party” concept was pretty confusing. With the dim lighting and frenzied camera shots, we were lucky if we caught a glimpse of the performers running up the stairs or navigating the overly zealous crowd.
My least favorite performance of the night, however, was during the pre-show when Nicole Scherzinger attempted to up her “street cred” by teaming up with the one and only Lil’ Wayne. She also tried to increase her hip hop appeal by throwing in a little booty shaking, mean mugging, and asking the crowd to “throw [their] hands up.” Sorry, Nicole. You’ll have to do more than that to prove that you’ve got what it takes to run in hip hop circles. Maybe if she knew anything about the social and political roots of hip hop in 1970’s New York City’s black and Latino neighborhoods, and its close ties to political activism and liberation movements (see Public Enemy for old school versions of this and Dead Prez for current interpretations), she would realize that there’s a lot more to the game than sex appeal, bling, and expensive clothes.
Even Jennifer Garner, presumably one of “America’s sweethearts,” couldn’t get her act together during the show. Come on Jenn—”Gym Class Fallout?!?!” To her defense, she was probably distracted by Jamie Fox who couldn’t seem to stand still or stop interrupting her. I’m sure Jenn’s PR rep was probably thinking: “I knew we shouldn’t have agreed to her co-hosting with Jamie. Those black people, they just don’t know how to act.” By the looks of it, Jenn was thinking the same thing.
Last but not least, the VMA’s featured a commercial for the soon-to-air new MTV show, A Shot with Tila Tequila. In this latest version of reality dating shows, My Space vixen, model, and singer Tila Tequila announces that she’s bisexual and that “16 gorgeous lesbians” and “16 gorgeous straight guys” will be engaging in the “ultimate battle of the sexes” for her affection. Why bisexual men and women were ineligible to participate as contestants, I’m not sure. But most importantly, while I understand that this show is a big step for bisexual representation in popular media culture, it unfortunately perpetuates the same old stereotypes about bisexuals — mainly that men and women who identify as bisexual are 1) attracted to both men and women at any given point in time; 2) equally attracted to both men and women at any given point in time; and 3) pinning men and women head to head when deciding who they want to engage in an intimate relationship with.
Contrarily to what the commercials for this show might suggest, bisexuality is much more fluid than that. In fact, men and women who identify as bisexual are rarely always and unequivocally attracted to both men and women 50/50 at any given point in time. Also, from my own experiences and those of friends and acquaintances, bisexuals’ rationale for selecting a partner rarely involves a full-on “battle of the sexes” between men and women. Instead, bisexuals are much more likely to be attracted to a person as a result of his/her individual character, personality, and physical traits, with the person’s gender featuring more or less prominently in that decision. The person’s gender can often be an afterthought when evaluating their ”pontential” as a partner.
With that said, I will definetly be watching Tila’s show and sounding off here on the range of issues that it will likely raise about sexuality and gender.
What I probably won’t be watching, however, are next year’s VMA’s…
m.
1 response so far ↓
theredelephant // September 11, 2007 at 4:03 am |
While I didn’t catch the whole show (only the, eh, electrifying opening performance), I did find Sarah Silverman’s bits funny. She walks a fine line between reinscribing and attacking stereotypes, but, from what I saw, she made the first seven minutes watchable.
One thing to mention — and to think about when we watch Tila — is the British reality dating show “There’s Something About Miriam,” which first aired in 2004 and is scheduled to appear in our red-white-and-blue on October 31st.
Basic premise: Men compete for the affections of one Miriam, a later-to-be-revealed-in-crazy-show-finale-on-a-sailboat-in-St. Tropez transgender individual.
Besides the fact that almost all the men initiated a post-show lawsuit against the production company et al for conspiracy to commit sexual assault, defamation, breach of contract, and personal injury, the actual promotional tag line in Britian — and perhaps to be in America — was/is “the cruellest show on television.” Obviously, this is/was not a move to (re)format gender expression in contemporary relationships; twas one more reason to “other” those who don’t ascribe to the binary.
Yes. As my fellow contributor would say, “Enough said.” We don’t need to start it here, but let’s just say that a network’s move to portray gender expression as offensive and pugilistic isn’t surprising, given the lackluster VMAs that my co-contributor so eloquently wrote about, and the preponderance of soporific, wan reality series these days. (See that one on VH1 about how to be a player and this season’s Real World, among others.) In our Web 2.0 world of youtube and, you guessed it, blogs, who needs network television?
And, needless to say, I’m guessing none of the contestants sued the network that produced “Joe Millionaire” because the male object of affection ultimately revealed that he was broke.
Bottom line: Can someone please tell HBO to hurry up and release the new season of “The Wire”?