Notes on a unifying thread between Klaus Kinski and Kanye West

She told the magazine that she had never been able to watch any of her father's films in which he typically played tyrants, criminals and outlaws. "When I did catch a glimpse of one I always thought: 'he's precisely like he is at home'." 

—Pola Kinski on her father

Are you willing to sacrifice your life?

—Kanye West, "Monster"

In 1971 Klaus Kinski embarked on a series of performances of the confrontational monologue Jesus Christus Erlöser (Jesus Christ Savior), which included lines like "I am not the official Jesus, the one that is tolerated by policemen, bankers, judges, hangmen, officers, church bosses, politicians, and other powerful people. I am not your superstar." As replayed in Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend, we see the performance degenerate into shouting, insults, tantrums and, most of all, diabolical scowls. The way he returns to the stage and rips the microphone from the hand of the man he replaces makes Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift look like exactly what it is: tame and inconsequential.

Also, Jesus, pronounced in German, is Yeezus.

Werner Herzog paraphrasing Kinski's attitude toward awards and prizes:

Klaus Kinski was an intense method actor who saw the promotional value in appearing insane, that the cult of genius necessitates unhealthy commitment, megalomania, otherworldliness. But we know he is an actor and that Herzog is a director. My Best Fiend is directed by Herzog and stars Kinski just as the 5 other movies were. Why would we acknowledge those are fictions manipulated by men and that this is not? The legacy of Herzog depends on Kinski which in turn depends on his transgressions. Herzog needs him to be a monster for the success of his films and the glow of their aura.

Kanye is actor and director, writer and producer, dancer and set designer. He can stop and appear as Herzog—calm, yet intense director—but the public cannot separate him from Kinski, an outsider shouting on a televised stage about how phony our entire civilization is and, especially, how impoverished our saviour has become, manipulated by power, unrecognizable.