KANYE WEST AND THE TEMPLE OF PORN

Some of you may remember the scene in the 1984 Steven Spielberg movie, 'Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom', where our hero Indy appears to turn evil under the spell of the Indian religious cult, The Thugees, led by leader Mola Ram. His Shanghai sidekick, Short Round, is in despair about his boss and mentor 'Indy' making this sudden about-face and desperately tries to bring him back to reason.

Well, speaking of leaders, Kanye West (Ye) currently appears to be in a cult of his own and it's beginning to resemble a cross between 'Evil Indy' and the dark isolated madness of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness' while his loyal fan base is fast becoming the collective equivalent of Short Round.

You see, a traumatic cognitive dissonance has fallen upon many of these devoted fans as they're starting to consider the very real possibility that their hero/idol has become a villain/false prophet and pray (mostly on X which may be a heresy itself) for his return to the God-fearing visionary they believed in during the peak Christian phase of his career where it seemed as if he was beginning to move away from delusions of being a God to working for God.

What has led to this recent concern about the musical/fashion genius? Only a teaser announcement on his You Tube account that he will be adding a porn component to his Yeezy industry and operations. This for a man who has claimed that pornography has ruined his life and brought nothing but darkness and destruction into it.

Shane Cashman (author of 'Kanye West Is Dead'), who has previously interviewed and spent time with the artist, articulated the paradox of this seedy development in a recent tweet.

One wonders, then, whether Kanye's wife, the architect/model, Bianca Censori, is a muse and angel of death combined as she appears to both actively endorse and encourage the direction of the 47 year old's latest addiction-inspired phase. Of course, we still don't know for sure whether Kanye is channelling his own version of Jimmy Stewart's Scotty in 'Vertigo' vibes as he designs and dresses Censori in the image of his new BDSM paradigm shift. It would also be naive not to assume that there is not some kind of strange, Machiavellian power mad sex-psychology in play with regards to Kanye pushing the envelope with Censori's flesh-baring displays in public as a dangerously creative form of revenge on his ex-wife Kim Kardashian (famous for a sex tape and revealing her naked body on every social media platform). If so, then the new Yeezy Porn venture could spell a bigger expansion of this notion, something like a Hip-Hop Hugh Hefner meets revenge fantasy on steroids.

“Playboy was my gateway into full-on pornography addiction. My dad had a Playboy left out at age five and it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life from age five to now, having to kick the habit. It just presents itself in the open like it’s OK. I stand up and say ‘You know, it’s not OK.'” - Kanye West

And then there is the question of where religion now sits in Kanye's amoral universe. He has stated fairly recently that he felt betrayed by Jesus and God when he fell upon relatively 'hard times' as a consequence of him lauding Hitler and the Nazis on the Alex Jones 'Info Wars' channel but I'm not convinced that adding yet more money and content to the 97 billion dollar global pornography industry is quite what his God-fearing mother Donda (the single biggest influence on his life) would have wanted for her son. The absence of Kanye's mother has really shown just how lost he is without her guidance and although watching the sky highs and crater lows of his career makes for rollercoaster entertainment, it's neither helping the artist now known as Ye, or the fans who have been so greatly inspired by his endless creative brilliance over the past two decades.

Of course, none of this is to say that there isn't another redemption arc to play out for Kanye (with the proviso he doesn't go full Howard Hughes from this point and isolate himself away from the world in his own Willy Wonka porn factory) but the more pertinent question this time round will be, will anyone care?

Indiana Jones had Short Round to burn his bare torso with a flaming torch, Kanye has Milo Yiannopolous, the British, right wing provocateur, who seems like someone who also routinely contradicts his own flaky moral standards depending on where the money's at for his latest grift.

Perhaps then, it will take a world-wide intervention from the fans to rouse the sex-drugged Kanye from his porn madness.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in this instance it may take the entire global fan base to raise this genius man-child.

Wake up Mr West!