Last night's BET Awards offered a curious blend of raw talent and theatrical excess. Teyana Taylor and Lauryn Hill, two artists of formidable pedigree, took the stage in a performance that was less a concert and more a ritualistic offering to the gods of cultural narcissism. The crowd roared, the lights flashed, and the pyrotechnics scorched the air.
But beneath the glittering surface, one could detect the unmistakable scent of decline. We have seen this before: the late Roman emperors throwing ever more extravagant games to placate a restless populace. Here, it is not bread and circuses but beats and choreography.
The British cultural exports, as the headline suggests, do indeed reign supreme. But what does that supremacy mean? It means we have outsourced our souls to London's slick production houses and Manchester's moody synth-pop.
We chant to songs written by Brits, dance to rhythms produced in Shoreditch, and call it 'American' culture. This is the soft imperialism of the post-empire era. Taylor and Hill are talented, no doubt.
But they are also symptoms of a deeper malady: the inability of our own institutions to create meaning. We have become spectators in our own lives, watching a spectacle that belongs to others. The BET Awards are a mirror, and it reflects a hollowed-out civilisation.
