Kanye Collaborator Elon Rutberg: La La Land Is “Fascist”

Elon Rutberg is a multidisciplinary artist best known for being one of Kanye West’s closest collaborators over the past few years. He co-wrote several songs on Yeezus and The Life of Pablo (including “New Slaves,” “Black Skinhead,” “Bound 2,” and “Wolves”) worked on the Yeezus tour, the “Famous” video, and more. He also has been working with Dirty Projectors on their new videos.

Earlier today, Rutberg posted a series of tweets excoriating La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s new musical film starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. (Rutberg has since taken down the tweets, which he had indicated he was planning to do after “maybe 5 minutes.”) He called the movie “fascist,” explaining, “‘Fascism’ is a conspiracy of business and military elites to seize control, and use whatever means necessary to sedate its populace. Read: throw money at an empowered director (after an admittedly fantastic film), and enable him to use his sizable talent without the benefit of actually challenging him on his ideas. You have now used your money as a means to weaponize dangerous naïveté.”

In another tweet, he called the movie “an act of destructive naïveté in a historical moment requiring depth, clarity, and refined thought.” See screenshots of Rutberg’s tweets below.

Previously, Rostam Batmanglij voiced similar criticisms of La La Land. Like Rutberg, he called out the film’s conceit that Ryan Gosling’s character “saved” jazz.

At the Golden Globes on Sunday, La La Land won several awards, including Best Original Score (by Justin Hurwitz) and Best Original Song (“City of Stars” by Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul). 

Correction (01/10/17 3:51 p.m. ET): A previous version of this story did not explain Rutberg’s intention to delete his tweets. It has since been amended to reflect that fact.

Comments are closed.