What do we learn from M.I.A.’s shocking new video? Nothing
Image via Wikipedia
It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video on hyper-consumption, and now we’re faced with another nine-minute music video from British alter-hip hopper M.I.A. Using a sample of Suicide’s 1977 track “Ghost Rider,” for her new single “Born Free,” she’s offered up a video/short film that explores an alternate reality kill-the-gingers discriminatory military campaign. And while it’s somber content hints at a more socially necessary message than that of Lady Gaga, what it reveals is equal vapidity wrapped in gravitas.
Watch the video after the jump (warning: pretty much NSFW)
The comparison of the two singers isn’t just for the sake of it; M.I.A. leveled that charge already when she told NME, that Lady Gaga “sounds more like me than I f—king do!”
She also said this about Gaga:
None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic… she’s the industry last’s stab at making itself important – saying, ‘You need our money behind you, the endorsements, the stadiums’ Respect to her, she’s keeping a hundred thousand people in work, but my belief is: Do It Yourself.
It’s not too difficult to punch quite few holes in that quote – specifically that M.I.A.’s biggest hit so far relies heavily on a sample of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” (a track released in 1982), and that a DIY credo kind of goes out the window when your latest video makes prominent note of who directed it. Not to mention the very obvious fact that during the entire nine or so minutes of “Born Free,” M.I.A. isn’t actually seen at all.
It’s on that last point that M.I.A.’s video, despite sharing length, general ambiguity, shocking NSFW set pieces, and on-the-nose delivery, looks like it veers away from Gaga’s “Telephone”: that when we’re through watching “Born Free,” our questions aren’t about M.I.A.
That might seem like an important distinction, given questions about artistic intent with these two videos. After “Telephone” was released, Lady Gaga talked to Ryan Seacrest about her vision for the video and suggested that it was a commentary on over-consumption. But really, all “Telephone” taught us is that the thing we were guilty of consuming too much of was Lady Gaga.
On the other hand, here we have a video with a message that actually doesn’t feature the artist. So, we might think, we have a winner. By not making herself the product, M.I.A. can take the moral high ground: her video was all about making people think.
But what’s all that violent imagery actually saying? Is it a simple reference to the infamous “hit a ginger” social network/South Park meme? Surely there’s more to it.
Not-so-wild speculation online is that it’s a commentary piece on the end of the war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers. It just so happens that M.I.A was born Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam in London to a former Tamil Tiger, Arular Arudpragasam.
During the Sri Lankan government’s final push to demolish the Tigers between 2008 and 2009, M.I.A. was outspoken in her defense of the rebels – she was even accused of supporting a terrorist group. She told the Daily Beast that what was occurring in Sri Lanka was “genocide.” Of particular relevance here was this quote:
They’re [the Tamils] treated like animals. They don’t have food or shelter and they’ve just been hit by a cyclone and the government hasn’t sent them any aid. It’s just out and out Nazi Germany.
That imagery sounds familiar.
But even with that background knowledge, is it at all clear at any point during “Born Free” that we’re not just being fed the same on-the-nose Discrimination Is Bad message that might come from any other artist? I doubt it. In any event, the video doesn’t add much to the debate, whatever it is, except make everyone nod a little knowingly at the deliberate juxtaposition between the visual content and the song’s title.
Unfortunately, much like with “Telephone” the real message ends up being too vague to have any impact. Whereas Gaga’s channel-flipping image chaos of competing set pieces mostly failed to add weight to the video’s message of consumption, the more complete linear narrative of the feature film motif equally fails to add any credibility to M.I.A.’s anti-discrimination diatribe. Both style choices simply end up being vehicles for the message, rather than part of it.
Ultimately, both “Born Free” and “Telephone” sell a shock factor rather than critical thinking. We ask questions about the images, not their meaning; we’re to be surprised that the visual exists at all, rather than be explained why. So, while the imagery in both is interesting and catches our attention, it’s almost entirely self-serving, and in the end, we don’t actually learn anything from it.
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Colin, I don’t think the video was about learning anything directly at all. I saw it as a magnificent artistic view of how Team-America World Police acts around the world. Perhaps not a lesson, but maybe an example.
Being born in America, I read about these types of acts done by the United States every week. This video paints the US’s actions perfectly.
Even more shocking is that the video shows that the US terrorizes indiscriminately and kills selectively. Storming the homes, beating random people, but only abducting and killing the Ginger kids.
The video was shocking and graphic, but more Americans need to see how their military acts around the world. I see this video as miles ahead of that washed over lady gaga video.
Fine, but what do we learn about the oppression itself?
In response to another comment. See in context »Your right Colin, probably nothing. Most people already know that oppression is evil and many of those people know their own governments actively participate in it.
The hard philosophical question is, how do you combat oppression without being oppressive yourself? Kind of a conundrum.
I don’t know, I liked the video because I felt it had substance. Art is interpretive, one person will see in one way, another person another way. It’s all part of the human condition I guess.
In response to another comment. See in context »can’t decide if you are just really into Lady Gaga or this video actually didn’t make sense to you. obviously i’m a giant MIA fan, so I’m on her side. buuuut I don’t get what you didn’t find relevant about this. it made me think of Rojo Amanecer. & bfd if she didn’t record it on her cell phone, haha! I would make big things if I was famous too. I don’t think anyone should have to stick to wheatpaste forever if they have the opportunity to do something high profile like this.
“It’s not too difficult to punch quite few holes in that quote – specifically that M.I.A.’s biggest hit so far relies heavily on a sample of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” (a track released in 1982), and that a DIY credo kind of goes out the window when your latest video makes prominent note of who directed it. Not to mention the very obvious fact that during the entire nine or so minutes of “Born Free,” M.I.A. isn’t actually seen at all.”
I’ve got to disagree with you there. Just because M.I.A.’s biggest hit happens to sample The Clash, it doesn’t mean that one song represents all of the sounds of cultures M.I.A. uses in her arsenal. In fact, it obscures the way she’s able to infuse her music with samples of kuduro, bhangra and Baile funk while dropping rhymes with an aboriginal hip-hop group. The fact that she can move so smoothly between doing that and lifting lines from Pixies’ songs shows her strengths and unique perspective.
And music video making and music creation are two distinct features, only linked in the final product of the former. Besides, she’s one of the rare artists who can pull a lot of weight and has the financial backing to make such a massive video. It doesn’t weigh in on her abilities when creating her music herself and with her peers, which was her initial argument with the “Do It Yourself” mantra. DIY today is hardly black and white, but she happens to come from the perspective of someone who makes and collaborates on all of her artistic output, which is what fueled her argument in the first place.
It’s essentially footage from Iraq or Afghanistan with all the brown-skinned people replaced by the whitest of the white. I think the goal is empathy, no? “Imagine if this was you.”
Here’s what I wrote to someone else, and I’ll put it here because I think it’s relevant:
Maybe I didn’t make this point clearly enough in the post (though I did make it). People will take whatever they want from the imagery, but the problem with it is that it offers nothing but a surface-level discussion that basically goes no further than “don’t discriminate” or as you put it, “imagine yourself in this position,” which actually does nothing to further any discussion – it just points something out and walks away. It’s kind of like Crash (the Paul Haggis one): it stands up and says, “this is happening!” and then sort of wastes everyone’s time with emotive imagery that goes nowhere. So, we’re left going “wow, that bit where he shot the kid was hard core. I guess that probably happens certain places,” which is fine, but it gives a false sense of being informed. It’s one thing to recognize that people get shot and beaten for no reason but when you don’t explain why (which the video doesn’t), you’re only learning half of the story – the half that’s the easiest to tell. (As a comment above put it, “I read about these types of acts done by the United States every week.”) Hence the fact that actually, we learn nothing from it.
In response to another comment. See in context »I imagine this “discussion” you’re speaking of is something only a select few of us are capable of having. For most of humanity, simply acknowledging “this could be me” is probably a huge first step.
If the video’s audience was supposed to be university-educated cosmopolitans, well…it probably could have done a lot more, in that case.
In response to another comment. See in context »Yeah, I agree with Trevor. On Dan Carlin’s podcast he was talking about the WikiLeaks helicopter footage – Americans weren’t upset that journalists were targeted. They were upset to see what an Apache helicopter strike looks like, and what soldiers sound like when they’re doing their jobs. I’m not so sure most people actually sit down and think of these things either, some people have to be shocked first.
In response to another comment. See in context »Yeah, but this isn’t shocking, it’s silly. It doesn’t help that the one kid’s execution was the most obvious CGI ever, and the dude exploding looks like they stole it from the Monty Python “how not to be seen” sketch. Some Internet commentator used the adjective “Cormanesque” to describe this and that seems the kindest description.
In response to another comment. See in context »I think that’s a very good point – what were people most outraged about? The fact that two innocent civilians were murdered, or the fact that, for some anyway, they had to finally see what’s been going on for the last 7-9 years? But something like the WikiLeaks helicopter video is in a completely different realm than this for just the simple fact that it actually happened. That, I’m sure, definitely got people thinking.
In response to another comment. See in context »Yeah sorry, it is a bit of a jump from war footage to an M.I.A music video. Some people react differently to violent special effects though. What would make my 18 year old cousin roll her eyes and yawn could make my mom cry for two hours. A lot of times I find videos or art that’s trying to shock me heavy-handed and annoying, but with this one I’m not sure what to think.
In response to another comment. See in context »This video is about silent genocide of the Tamils last year May 2009, where over 50,000 people were massacred in a month, in this massacre without witness, where NGOs and independent reporters were barred. This genocide was conduct by the Sri-Lanka government with the Support of India and China. There were well over 300,000 people were incarcerated to Nazi-like concentration camps, where people were picked up and shots, where women were constantly raped by the security forces. And this whole genocide was hidden from the rest of the world.
Visit the URL, wher you will see naked tamils were being shot, similar to MIAs video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Am-0NdSx4