Author: Cordelia Kerney
Kanye West, undoubtedly among our generation’s beacons of pop culture, has had a tumultuous year following his infamous incident with Taylor Swift. Now making his way back into the limelight, Kanye shows no lack of imagination or flair: He has gone so far as to replace all of his bottom teeth with ones made of gold and diamonds.
In a recent appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” West said of his new teeth that he “just thought the diamonds were cooler.” He went on to say that “there’s just certain stuff that rock stars are supposed to do.” Indeed, today’s musicians are more raucous than ever; From Lady Gaga’s pant-less gallivanting to Kanye’s diamond teeth, 2010 is a year of pushing boundaries.
But in an increasingly superficial society, Kanye, a self-proclaimed “soldier of culture,” has come to embody America’s, and perhaps by extension, the world’s, worsening affliction of materialism. What do we say when our pop cultural icons deface their bodies with testaments to the gods of goods? Can we simply dismiss these and other acts of materialistic devotion as benign modern self-expression? Or is it something that will come back to bite us?
The first thing that comes to mind, though, is the irony of Kanye’s new chompers. Though he has criticised the diamond industry in the past with his song “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” many activists would still be quick to point out the human cost of procuring diamonds for first world countries. While he and many other successful rappers and pop stars can afford these rocks, the people who actually mine diamonds may not even have access to basic health care.
It is one thing to drape diamond-studded jewelry all over oneself, but a completely different thing to replace an entire half of one’s jaw with this commodity.
While Kanye did suffer damage to his teeth in a car crash in 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported that the diamonds changed the entire physiology of his mouth. For one, his top row of teeth will now suffer greater wear. Chewing, as well, will present problems.
West also stated in his interview with DeGeneres, “It was the first time [I took a break] since I actually, you know, ‘made it,’ since I started. It was time to just take a break and develop more as a person.” If Kanye’s diamond smile reflects what celebrities consider “developing as a person,” then we are in for some culturally bereft times ahead.
Granted, it was Kanye West who replaced his teeth, not Justin Bieber. Still, if successful celebrities mutilate themselves to display their accumulation of expensive goods, then one might naturally assume that materialism is now so deeply-rooted that it has become a core value of modern society.
We are at a crossroads where we can either plunge deeper towards a meaningless abyss of materialism or face the reality that our own personal worth has come to depend on how much bling we have stashed away (or, in Kanye’s case, stashed right in our faces) and decide to change it.
On the contrary, though, perhaps Kanye is reclining somewhere in his “maison luxe” laughing to himself, smugly delighting over his misinterpreted social commentary. Perhaps Kanye’s diamonds are a testament to the way Americans ceaselessly chase the effervescent dream of more, more, more.Would anyone actually believe that Kanye replaced his teeth to defy modern materialism? Probably not. And even if he really is having a laugh, his new teeth nevertheless underscore our obsession with having expensive, pretty things as a means to express ourselves as successful, interesting people. Clearly, this has brought him attention.
In the end, maybe that is all anyone wants – to be noticed. But if we, as a culture, have reached the point where diamond teeth are the only way to garner attention, then something is clearly wrong.
Cordelia Kenney is an undeclared first-year. She can be reached at ckenney@oxy.edu.
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