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	<title>Screen Machine &#187; Real happy for you: A conversation around Taylor Swift</title>
	<link>http://www.screenmachine.tv</link>
	<description>Long live the new flesh</description>
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		<title>Real happy for you: A conversation around Taylor Swift</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
When Kanye West, at the recent MTV Video Music Awards, grabbed Taylor Swift’s microphone during her acceptance speech for Best Video of the Year by a Female Artist, and pronounced the now infamous words – “Yo Taylor, I’m real happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time, OF ALL TIME!!” – there was immediate shock and astonishment, from both initial viewers and those who caught the outburst later on entertainment news and as it went viral on the internet. This shock was of course fed by the entertainment media, always so desperate to invest the bland narcissism of celebrity culture with the veneer of drama that they must have received this shockingly genuine moment of tension and excitement as a godsend. At the same time, the controversy (dubbed, inevitably, “Kanyegate”) inspired an outrageously popular internet meme, playing upon the absurd logic of West’s outburst by placing it in ever more ridiculous contexts.
Between the hypocritical outrage of the entertainment media and the withering irony of amateur satirists; between terror and pathos – this of course is the position Kanye West has for years occupied in the popular consciousness, a position further reinforced by the Kanyegate episode. For West is not so much a tragic figure as he is a pathetic imitation of one: calling upon a whole Hollywood mythology of unhappy, uncomfortable stars, who shine both because and in spite of this supposed, persistently iterated gap between the conformist demands&#8230;]]></description>
		<link>http://www.screenmachine.tv/2009/10/30/real-happy-for-you-a-conversation-around-taylor-swift/</link>
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