The VMAs used to be dangerous

Do you remember when the VMAs were dangerous? When genuine rock stars got into fistfights onstage, when Prince showed his ass on live, national TV, when Fiona Apple called the assembled gatekeepers and demigods of the music industry bullshit to their faces? While it's inevitable that pop culture changes, the kind that MTV embodied in the 1980s and '90s—you know, with its byzantine nested references and various beefs—is dead.

What's left in its place feels like leftovers from a more perfect time. The VMAs are more anodyne than ever, and matter less than they ever have. This is not least because the pop cultural landscape is increasingly splintered by platform and audience, but it's mostly because MTV has, apparently, become afraid to take risks.

To put it another way: What we needed was a daring, electrifying political statement. What we got last night, for the most part, was a spate of warmed-over nostalgia.

Let's start with the great: Beyoncé. Even before she stepped onstage to give a performance that would make anyone else's career, Bey made waves when she showed up to the VMA white carpet with the Mothers of the Movement—those four women who lost their sons (Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin) to police brutality. As MTV News's Jamil Smith put it, they made "a statement with their mere physical presence;" the women also appear in Beyoncé's video for "Freedom."

Her performance motioned obliquely toward racist police violence, when Beyoncé performed "Pray You Catch Me": A group of dancers spotlit in white were "shot;" the light would turn red and the women would fall, in pairs, until only Beyoncé was left standing. At the end, she fell into the arms of a man wearing a black hoodie. And then the show went on, without a mention of the Mothers of the Movement or Black Lives Matter.

Aside from the matter of black lives, there was little mention of the current political situation in America. Lance Bass, formerly of boyband superfame, wore a jacket by the designer Rey Ortiz that said "Love trumps hate"—which the LA Times noted was a phrase "straight out of" Hillary Clinton's campaign. "The #VMA red carpet has always been a great place to make a statement. Thank you @fashionbyreyortiz for helping me voice mine! #LoveTrumpsHate," Bass tweeted later. Which is fine! Just tepid.

Speaking of: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, the comedy duo, were tapped to do what was essentially a host job for the ceremony. They were in character as social media-obsessed fameballs; while I understand it was intended to be a commentary on the vapid nature of internet discourse—and their catchphrase, "that's the tweet!" is something I've whispered too many times when composing fire tweets—the schtick was tired by the second time Key and Peele appeared onscreen. (That said: The tweets they composed as their alter-egos, @LizardSheeple and @TheShamester, were pretty great. But as tweets. Not as on-air banter.)

By the time Drake showed up—he missed accepting his award for Best Hip Hop Video because he was stuck in traffic—to present Rihanna, who performed four times, with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award, the show was pretty much over. Drake gave a romantic speech and went in for the kiss; Rih dodged. With the notable exception of Beyoncé's Lemonade medley, that was the closest the night got to electric.

Before this year's VMAs began, much ado was made of the fact that the show's producers were giving Kanye West some minutes of unscripted time. Yeezy being Yeezy, many expected a scandal, or at least something they could tweet about; he gave a short, inoffensive speech wherein he mentioned gun violence in Chicago and spoke about his idols. Yeezy being Yeezy, he also managed to make an astute observation by the end of his time onstage: "Bro," he said, addressing the stadium, "we are undeniably the influence, the thought leaders."

That much is true. But influence should be used wisely. While it raises (and ignored) the perennial question of whether artists have an obligation to perform their politics in public, Kanye's words highlight a basic truth. If our assembled, popularly elected "thought leaders" couldn't manage to take on anything remotely political, can we?