Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’ Video.

Everything related to ‘Graduation’, the singles, the video for 'Can't Tell Me Nothing' and now, the ‘Stronger’ video, give me a slightly ambivalent feeling. All of it is cool but none of it is amazing. I respect what these songs and videos sound or look like, but they don’t have me very excited. My initial response is a mixture of “that was cool” tinged with slight disappointment because it never really adds up to what Kanye hyped it as or what my little super-fan imagination turned it into. When you compare what Kanye is releasing to the crap that is on the radio or MTV, it stands out as impressive but on its own, it falls slightly short.

It’s hard to even begin to explain without sounding like a nit-picky asshole (but when have I been afraid of that?). The best place to start would be that, the video is essentially an ‘Akira’ homage. For those that don’t know, ‘Akira’ is in many ways, the definitive anime, the kind of anime that even people who aren’t interested or don’t care for anime should be able to enjoy. I think it basically ruins all other animes because almost anything you see after ‘Akira’ doesn’t really compare. Monique, upon seeing it recently, compared it to a bible story or something and I think that’s a really accurate comparison. It moves from being a story of a group of friends to being about all kinds of metaphysical shit without ever being bogged-down in pretension or exposition (the bane of most animes’ existence). But yeah, there are better places than here to read about ‘Akira’ if you don’t know about it and of course, you could just go out and rent it; it's totally worth it.

The Kanye video is primarily a homage to a sequence in the movie where Tetsuo is subjected to a series of tests by the government, then locked in a hospital, and busts out, destroying an entire line of armed guards. The video contains numerous recreations of shots from the anime (see above) that are really effectively done. Kanye’s does some excellent physical acting, contorting his face just right, not too over-the-top, and his walk is as scary as it is when Tetsuo is doing it in the movie. Kanye’s apparent empathy with Tetsuo makes me think the sequence has some thematic resonance: Something about fame and being subjected to criticism (deserved and undeserved) and blasting back at it with full-force?

It all works conceptually, invoking 'Akira', particularly the character of Tetsuo is apt. Apt because it suggests Kanye's mix of blind, righteous indignation and unblinking self-awareness. Tetsuo is the antagonist of 'Akira', slowly over-taken by his powers and the hubris newfound power entails, but he is also undeniably the main attraction, in part, because of his out-of-control-ness; he's the most complex and engaging chracter. I think Kanye understands these kinds of contradictions in himself. We're oddly annoyed and sympathetic with Tetsuo and likewise, with Kanye West.

Kanye's music has always been fueled by opposition, but there's a seething disdain and anger in 'Can't Tell Me Nothing' and 'Stronger' that feels a little different than the mix of enthusiasm and arrogance on 'Late Registration'. As he did on 'College Dropout', Kanye feels like he's really got something to prove; it doesn't seem like he's going through the motions, which he basically was when 'Late Registration' was released. Kanye seems to be tapping into Tetsuo's very rarified form of defiance.

Unfortunately the video itself, even in the scenes that mimic 'Akira', share little of the movie's energy and anger. The video’s failure to be as engaging and impressive as it sounded like it was going to be, falls on Hype Williams’ shoulders. Hype Williams is a stylist not a kinetic, movement-oriented director. His video for ‘Diamonds From Sierra Leone’ was clever in its parody of ‘De Beers’ diamonds commercials, that sort of too-clean, ultra-clear black and white and the ‘Gold Digger’ video was better than the song, but he seems to have the unfortunate habit of attempting to constantly create a new signature effect or stylistic flourish for every video. That effect used in the Ne-Yo video and the Robin Thicke video, wherein the images overlapped, essentially, putting images where the black-bars of normal widescreen would be, was too busy. The ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ video and the ‘Stronger’ video have this obnoxious technique where the footage kinda looks like security-cam footage for a few seconds and then stutters or freezes like a computer glitch and it just isn’t very interesting or clever. It makes sense in this futuristic video but it had no place in ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ and it highlights a certain copying-and-pasting of techniques that plagues most video directors. They just don’t seem to have much of a grasp of what actually fits or makes sense, just what looks really “cool”.

There’s also the frustrating fact that it still relies on the typical music video structure of inter-cutting two “stories” with performance footage. Even a video this strange and out-there is still anchored in convention. All of it looks amazing on its own but as a whole, it just doesn’t really gel, particularly the Kanye performance footage. The most alive part of the video are these quick hand-held shots of Japan that look like they were maybe even shot on-the-fly; they give the video an energy it lacks in most other places.

Hype Williams is an amazing stylist and I half-regret all the shit I’m talking here already, but ultimately, I don’t think Hype Williams and Kanye West really fit together. The raw feel of Chris Milk’s videos for Kanye (‘All Falls Down’, ‘Jesus Walks’, ‘Touch the Sky’) fit significantly better than Hype Williams’ smoothed-out direction. Kanye, despite his popularity, just isn’t a typical rap superstar, he’s too weird, too idiosyncratic, too daring. No matter how hard he tries or no matter who he hires, Kanye can never be bigger-than-life because his appeal is how honest he is about everything. Imagine a cheaper version of this video directed by Milk, or even Michel Gondry who directed the ‘Heard Em’ Say’ video. The biggest problem with the ‘Stronger’ video is that it isn’t very fun. Only a director as vapid as Hype Williams could make a futuristic rap video, in Japan, with the most ambitious rapper around, and end-up with something uninteresting.