September 18, 2009

The World is a Stage

All the world's a stage, at least that's what they say. In the day of TV and YouTube, this statement is now more true than ever. I was reminded of this after the memorable mishap of Kanye West at the VMA's just a week ago. In case you missed it, here's a video of the incident.

<a href="http://www.mtv.com/ontv/vma/2009/" target="_blank">Kanye West Storms The VMA Stage</a>

Everyone's put their foot in their mouth at some point, but very few have ever done it on national TV. And now that our society has become so in touch with the Internet, news of Kanye's blunder has spread like wildfire. By Monday, not only had everyone heard of the incident, but also began to mock it in a variety of ways. Several Photoshopped pictures posted on my school's bulletin board depicted Kanye interrupting other icons (Patrick Swayze's death is not as good as Michael Jackson's, and the red Power Ranger isn't as cool as the green one), while a quiz I took on Facebook informed me on when Kanye would ruin one of my own special moments.

Needless to say, all the world is a stage, and Kanye's act was so memorable that it proceeded to make encores throughout the other venues the Internet has to offer. With the advent of such platforms as YouTube and Facebook, even ordinary people can rise to celebrity status and have the same effect. A man named Gary Brolsma, for example, became famous thanks to a webcam video of his crazy dancing to a pop song. The entire video couldn't have taken more than five minutes to make, but everyone knew who he was as a result. In this day and age, celebrities have more power that ever to rock society's boat - Kanye West did last week, and the boat's still rocking. But the realm of celebrities isn't just limited to rappers, rock stars, and movie actors. Ordinary people have joined the ranks and are rocking the boat on a regular basis. If you're one of those people, don't rock it in the wrong direction. People will remember you for it, and you will likely never live it down.

T.H. Excellence

1 comment:

RDH said...

There is a lot of talk about "civilty" now a days, from Kanye Wests embarrasing performance to to Joe Wilson's heartfelt outburst "You Lie!". Civilty in many instances is something we have lost in our society. One writer thinks it is the result of the protests of the 60s in which people protested various injustices. Now it seems there are very few "injustices" left in our society so people just make outbursts to get noticed.

Good commentary on your part, enjoyed reading it.