Kanye West's 34-minute video for "Runaway" is fraught with symbolism, ballerinas

If his newly amended album cover and recent Saturday Night Live performance haven’t yet clued you in, Kanye West’s upcoming My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has high-art aspirations and something to do with ballerinas. Ballerinas and feathers: Like suits and cherubs, Kanye West just can’t get enough of them these days. Also phoenixes, because a phoenix is a mythological bird that’s consumed by flames and born anew from its own ashes, and one time Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards and people were like, “What an asshole” for a while, so he can relate.

Anyway, in addition to the song-a-week, hourly-crazy-tweet buildup to the album’s release, Fantasy now has this equally epic accompanying video for “Runaway” that runs for 34 minutes—much of it in slow motion—and it’s full of all the stuff that Kanye likes and which is also symbolic, probably: ballerinas, feathers, suits, phoenixes, and Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks wearing a costume that automatically renders it NSFW, although you really shouldn’t be watching a 34-minute Kanye West video at work anyway. There’s also comets hitting sports cars, Kanye caring for baby deer and sheep, a parade with a marching band and giant glowing Michael Jackson head, and some surprising revelations about the secret origins of statues.