Video: Werner Herzog Positively Critiques Kanye West's 'Famous' Video

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 12, 2016 4:55PM

Werner Herzog / Getty Images / Photo: Andreas Rentz

Rejoice, Internet. After recently tossing scorn on Pokemon GO, the maverick German filmmaker Werner Herzog has cast his unforgivingly elemental worldview and unmistakably fatalistic German accent on another slice of the day’s pop culture: Kanye West’s controversial, beef-baiting “Famous” video. As it turns out, Herzog found much to celebrate when asked by The Daily Beast to review and narrate the clip, which infamously features wax figures of naked celebrities and launched a the Taylor-vs-Kanye saga into a new stratosphere. (Sorry, Lena Dunham.)

Herzog is in fine critical-analysis form as unpacks the theme of performative identity and how it relates to both art and social media:

“That’s an interesting thing that [the] Internet can create: doppelgängers, easily. The most interesting thing for me as a storyteller is ... in a movie, yes, you do have a story, and you develop a story. But at the same time you have to be very careful and think about and organize a parallel story, a separate, independent story that only occurs in the collective mind of the audience.”

“Our understanding of self has in a way deeply and radically changed,” he adds.

After rather hilariously calling Kanye West “Kane,” Herzog gives the Chicago-native rapper a hearty admissions approval. “If he applies to my film school with this film, I would invite him. I have never seen anything like this. It really has caliber.”