Kanye West poses as Jesus

So I figure this could go one of two ways. One, all sorts of people--you know the kind, the ones you daren't say "Happy Holidays" to--are going to get all over Kanye for depicting himself as Christ. In which case you and I will all enjoy ourselves utterly by asking them "Yeah, I know, you said the same thing when "The Passion" came out, didn't you? You know, how disrespectful it is for one person to have the hubris to take and control the image of Jesus for their own self-aggrandizement? Yeah, I mean, you were all over that Mel Gibson, weren't you?" That will be fun.

The other way it could go is that everyone will get kind of nervous, because Kanye did do "Jesus Walks", after all, and got a lot of Grammy noms, and seems to be a fairly together guy, and plus when looking at that picture they'll realize that hey, Kanye does look a darn sight more like Jesus than James Caviezel, for pete's sake, and that will remind them of the big stink they so patently did not make over Mel Gibson's white Jesus, and then it'll be a race thing, and no one will touch it. That could happen, but it won't be as fun.

Then you have the Super-Intelli Theologienne reaction, obviously better than either of the preceding two, which goes as follows. According to my theological source, TheSuperficial.com, Kanye's explanation of this photo shoot was, "In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?"

Now we know Kanye is a faithful guy who, even though he likes to talk about how great he is, obviously wouldn't blaspheme by depicting himself as Jesus to make that point. (And we also assume he knows enough about the Bible that did he choose to do something so dubious, he'd use an image of the risen and not the suffering Christ.) So look what he's doing here. Kanye depicts himself as Jesus, knowing that everyone who looks at that picture is going to think, "What, Kanye West thinks he's Jesus?" (Maybe they'll even go on to think, "Mr. West, I know Jesus. Jesus is a friend of mine. And Mr. West . . ." Anyway.) Cause of course we know he isn't. What Kanye's doing is an important postmodern technique which would sound a lot more impressive if I could remember the stinking word for it. Ahh! I'll look it up for you.

Kanye's using a sign that is obviously different from the thing it signifies to show you something about the signified. "Pff, well, Kanye West isn't God." Right, but he's now tricked us into thinking about the discrepancy between humans (even Grammy-winning humans) and God. Whatever Kanye West is--finite, American, lyrical, black, male--the irritated Rolling Stone reader is forced to conclude that God may be that, but is anyway clearly more than that. Not a bad insight on a walk past the newsstand.