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#2: Kanye and Taylor Swift

Kanye is infamous for his interruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the 2009 Video Music Awards. She was just beginning her speech when Kanye broke in by saying, "Yo Taylor, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!" (Rolling Stone). He was referring to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video which lost to Taylor Swift's "You Belong with Me" video for the Best Female Video award. Our textbook reminded me of this incident when it mentioned the Romans conditions of slander: "speaking ill of a person during a dramatic production." (Tedford and Herbeck 76). This fits what the Romans would have defined as defamation because Taylor was giving a speech in front of millions of people (dramatic production) and Kanye implied that she didn't deserve the award (ill speech).
Kanye's act would be considered a libel because spoken defamation that is broadcasted is treated as a libel (Tedford and Herbeck 85). The interesting part about this is if Kanye's criticism towards Taylor helped or hurt her career. The book talks about different damages, and I think legally Taylor could have argued for punitive damages because the case could be made that it hurt her reputation. Realistically, though, this event brought both celebrities more attention and as the saying goes "no publicity is bad publicity". Taylor's new song "Look What You Made Me Do" very strongly implies she is talking about what happened that night:
"The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama
But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma
And then the world moves on, but one thing's for sure
Maybe I got mine, but you'll all get yours"
So if she is making money off the incident through music sales, did it really tarnish her reputation? The event obviously left some trauma if she is still writing about it 8 years after it happened, but because this 'defamation' arguably made her richer and more famous, is it really defamation?


Sources

Kreps, Daniel. “Kanye West Storms the VMAs Stage During Taylor Swift's Speech.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 13 Sept. 2009, www.rollingstone.com/music/news/kanye-west-storms-the-vmas-stage-during-taylor-swifts-speech-20090913.

Tedford, Thomas L., and Dale A. Herbeck. Freedom of Speech in the United States. 8th ed. Strata Publishing, INC., 2017.

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 27, 2017 at 2:51 PM

    I really love that you brought up this incident in relation to the topic. This has to be one of the most famous instances of defamation on a public stage. When Kanye did this to Taylor, it made global news for weeks. Even though his words can be taken as damaging and harmful to Taylor's reputation, the speech was a huge economic booster for both artists. Like you said, no publicity is bad publicity.

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