How do you feel about Macklemore and the 33 couples being married during his performance? Do you feel it was a publicity stunt and an act to make him and the other performers seem like good people? Just interested in you opinion :)

So I was intending to write about what I thought about it and your ask was a reminder, lol I don’t think I have anything super insightful to say, so I’m just going to give a play by play of some of my thoughts.

first of all: wtf was with macklemore’s hand gestures?

he just couldn’t keep his hands/arms fucking still it was so awkward [edit: this statement has ableist implications and I didn’t even go into why I pointed this out to make fun of Macklemore my point was that he won an award for this performance as a white man in a Black genre despite the fact he is a bad performer. he won an award for this performance, over much more talented Black rappers, when he chose these gestures as an abled, neurotypical man which is indicative of his white privilege]

second, i was just ughghghghghghhghghhh as he was rapping, i mean the problematic aspects of lyrics are a dead horse that’s been beaten many times, but my least favorite parts are



1) opening the song with a story about him ~thinking~ he was gay as a kid to talk about homophobia in our society (when you compare that to Angel Haze’s cover of this song (tw: self harm, hate crimes, homophobia, suicide) opening about her actual experiences being pan and coming out, it really sums up why straight voices should never be privileged over lgb+ ones—never in the song does Macklemore address his straight privilege and barely touches on the real struggles of lgb+ people)

2) him using the f-slur

3) him saying “if i were gay, i’d think hiphop hates me,” which simultaneously casts hiphop as extra-homophobic, erases lgb rappers, erases Black straight rappers who have come out in support of lgb people, implies that he, a straight man, can speak for gay people and knows what we “think,” and is him not checking his white privilege in critiquing a Black genre (and making money off of doing so)

4) him saying that gay rights is the “same” as the civil rights movement for poc twice in the song

but when Mary Lambert came on, i was happy everyone cheered for her and i was thinking: “finally some real talent”

when queen latifah came on i was thinking oh cool, more representation, that’s nice - also queen latifah is awesome

and i was prepared to see the couples getting married, because I’d read about it beforehand (I watched this online after it was aired, not live) - and yeah, i’m kind of cynical about this stuff, but I thought the same-gender couples were cute

but then what was with the straight-passing couples????

I was actually kind of pissed about the straight-passing couples (there were quite a few, more than pictured here) because if the point is supporting same-gender/same-sex marriage, why not let cishet people just get married like they always do in their own time — they’ve been able to do it since forever?? [edit: it’s possible some of these couples could include bi or trans people, but because they are not visibly trans nor does anyone indicate they are bi or trans, it’s not real representation; and let’s face it, given bi and trans-erasure the likelihood they are is really small: and couples who look like this face very little stigma]. We already have a straight dude rapping up there and profiting off this whole thing, do we really need to add more people who will be perceived as straight to the situation? it just rubbed me the wrong way

and then came…

…MADONNA????? ??????

and she sounded TERRIBLE

why couldn’t they include a gay or bi or pan artist? why madonna??? especially when she is sounding and looking this bad (like totally off key and just bad) - like frickin’ Angel Haze’s version of this song was amazing why not invite her to do a verse of her version? why fucking bring in a straight woman who has profited off of lgbt+ people to sing a terrible made up piece of shit line over and over? - again more evidence macklemore doesn’t really care about lgbt+ people

and like i know this is a wedding and some lgbt+ people are christian, but it also bothered me that the whole thing was set up as a church just given the history of christian oppression toward lgbt+ people and just…I’m sure not everyone who wanted to get married here was frickin christian

Yeah I think a lot of it was a publicity stunt. There’s so much Macklemore could have done here that would have been more useful to lgbt+ people. Firstly, all the people married could have been same-gender couples. And yeah, instead of Madonna bring in another lgbt+ person, or give Mary Lambert her own verse from her own version of this song. Honestly, why even do the marriage shit- it feels so gimmicky? But idk, I could see someone arguing it’s good for representation to show happy same-gender couples, but something feels really…yeah gimmicky and exploitative about it, but maybe that’s just me being biased against Macklemore.

Anyway, those are my off-the-cuff thoughts.