Kanye West’s “Famous” video clip is no orgy, it is Fame’s Last Supper

Kanye West just dropped his long-awaited “Famous” video clip. Of course, creating lots of controversies and what I think to be misconceptions of what he was trying to represent. Although, I have to say that any interpretation of an artwork is valid and any critique is worth of attention. Some people saw an orgy, others saw an extremely misogynous and sexualized video clip (can’t blame them, the song lyrics are really misogynous). But I saw something else and I’m not alone. I saw Yeezy’s representation of his own Last Supper, and a video clip that explains without much effort what fame is all about.

We all know by now that the video was inspired by Vincent Desiderio’s Sleep. Twelve people sleeping peacefully on the same bed covered by white sheets. There is no sexual undertone on both of these works, no one is even touching each other, they are just there, sleeping, dreaming, breathing heavily. There are some main differences between the video clip and the painting. While in the painting there is no central point and everyone is equal, during the video clip we have Kanye West right in the middle of the bed, which immediately gives him some kind of importance, if he wanted to avoid this he would have placed himself and Kim more to the side. This is the first tip that suggests a Yeezy version of Jesus’ Last Supper.

“Yeah, Pedro, but within “The Last Supper” we have Jesus in the middle plus twelve apostles, so it is a total of thirteen people and during ‘Famous’ there are only twelve people on the bed.” — one could say. But I would argue here that you missed the thirteenth person… the camera holder. It is you, it is me, it is our point of view. Kanye West may be suggesting that we are Judas — the one that will betray him — or Peter — the one who will deny him three times, or any other apostle that we identify with. Or he is saying that we think we are about to lie on the bed with them, but not yet, we are still awake, just watching, videotaping.

We are not participating in the game that they are playing. The Fame Game. The video presents extremely different people lying together on this bed. Nice people and horrible people. People that love each other and people that hate each other. The single similarity between all of them is that they are famous. The Fame Bed doesn’t really care for who you are. Rihanna lies next to her abusive ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, who committed a hideous crime against her, most people think of him as a despicable person (I do), but Fame doesn’t care, he is still famous. Donald Trump is famous, for Yeezy’s sake! George Bush! And don’t get me started on Bill Cosby. Ray J and Kim are lying side by side. Kanye West and Taylor Swift do not get along — to say the least — and both are equally famous.

Fame doesn’t care for morals. It doesn’t care for cleverness or originality. Anyone can go to Fame’s Last Supper. You just need the media to sell you and people to buy you in order to lie on this bed. And Kanye knows that you are tired of holding the camera, you want to go to sleep, you want to be painted on Fame’s fresco, for all eternity, despite all your flaws.