jeen-yuhs (part 3)

jeen-yuhs (part 3)

While Part 1 + 2 benefited greatly from the kind of fly-on-the-wall inside access that Coodie (the primary filmer) had to Kanye’s struggles to achieve that first taste of mainstream success, Part 3 loses that, largely, and spends a lot of time compiling media footage and offering commentary.

Coodie reunites with Kanye to a limited extent after the release of Life of Pablo and there is some limited more verité footage from the period between 2016-2020, though the amount of it is somewhat limited and tends to not be quite as compelling.

At several points in the final leg of the film, Coodie repeatedly turns off the camera because he finds it somewhat unethical to be filming Kanye’s rambling monologues that seem to originate from a place of mental instability.

Perhaps the most noteworthy segment, for me, is a scene in which Kanye is listening to Tucker Carlson talk about the media’s perception that Kanye “is going insane” being a result of his espousing of Christian values like being against abortion. He seems to wholeheartedly agree with Tucker’s assessment.

Scenes like this one suggest that Kanye’s turn to religion is very serious for him, but also work in some way as a stand in for how any number of Trump supporters regardless of race can come to see themselves as laughed out of the public square by a media elite who have no use for their traditional values, the losers of a culture war who are looking for a champion to charge into battle on their behalf.

While I am not attempting to be an apologist for either Trump or Kanye, I do think that there is a lesson to be learned from this moment regarding the dangers of being dismissive of people’s fundamentally held beliefs and attempts to tightly constraint the limits of acceptable speech. It’s easy to be cynical about someone like Kanye and view his every move as a form of publicity stunt, but the final act of this documentary perhaps tries to first and foremost remind us that he is also a person… and that no amount of success can wipe away the human capacity for grief, frustration, and alienation.

I suppose that at some level what I’m trying to say is that we should seek to understand first rather than to judge first when someone says or does something that is offensive to us. I’m not saying it’s easy, nor am I saying that anyone should be faulted for being unable or even unwilling to do so (goes against the entire premise of my argument, in fact). I’m saying though that perhaps it’s worth holding as an aspiration, one that might do more to change the toxicity of our culture than almost anything else.

jeen-yuhs (part 2)

jeen-yuhs (part 2)

Part 2 pretty much begins with Kanye getting into a car accident in LA almost directly after being signed to Roc-a-Fella records. The accident breaks his jaw in multiple locations and breaks whatever interest Roc-a-Fella had in releasing his album.

…so he keeps making beats to pay the bills and scampers to record The College Dropout without any institutional support, using borrowed studio time from friends and colleagues.

There’s a scene of them going into MTV after hours to work on the equipment there to produce the video for “Through the Wire” which Kanye pays for out of pocket.

Kanye forgoes recommended surgery in order to keep pushing to take advantage of this make-it-or-break-it moment.

He self-releases the video for “Through the Wire,” and it blows up and tops the MTV charts for weeks. Suddenly, Roc-a-Fella is interested again, and we end this chapter with him winning a Grammy.

Watching the “Through the Wire” video again, I can see how the first two parts of jeen-yuhs are effectively a three-hour version of what the video distilled into three minutes. The fly-on-the-wall style continues to be remarkable, showing recording sessions, initial reactions, etc. to what would ultimately become an album that has sold over four million copies in the United States alone. It’s not hard to see that Kanye made this a reality through a kind of confident determination that none of the many obstacles in his path could deter.

I am very curious to see what kind of access and footage awaits in part 3 once Kanye has reached a kind of superstar level of success.

jeen-yuhs (part 1)

jeen-yuhs (1)

despite the problems with kanye (which are many-storied), it is an objectively amazing thing to have had a filmmaker following him around NYC and Chicago right before and during the time in which he ended up getting a record deal and crafting his first album.

cinema verité is the dominant mode throughout—the camera a witness and also an audience against which Kanye develops a media persona.

While I am generally skeptical of literally everything that Netflix does (television and films algorithmically optimized to be addictive), sometimes the giant wads of cash that they have to throw around result in something amazing, which I believe to be the case here.

Full judgement to be reserved till I reach the end.