This is a video for M.I.A.'s controversial "Born Free" video which shows the rounding up and slaughtering of red-headed people. I happen to love red hair and find it absolutely beautiful, but enough with my fetishes. When watching this video I remember being very confused about what was going on. I thought that I would have some more context with which to frame the premise of the video but sadly that never happened. However, this video is very suspenseful in the sense that you cannot fully buy into what's going on into the video. I kept thinking that maybe at the end of the video we'd found out that they were gathered up for a non-violent reason. Unfortunately all hopes of a happy ending went out of the window when a red-headed child was shot in the head at point blank range.
The violence in this video doesn't really seem to serve a purpose or some sort of commentary. I know that M.I.A. is from the UK and there is definitely a prejudice towards those with titian hair, but it's not like she's advocating tolerance for the gingers. I, for one, have become accustomed to expecting some sort of social commentary whenever I see videos that are tailored to have a good amount of shock effect; however, M.I.A. doesn't seem to be saying anything in this video besides the lyrics to her song. All of the redheads are massacred and the audience is left wondering why. Maybe M.I.A. is playing with the notion that all artists need to make a statement with their art whether it be visual or auditory. Or maybe, just maybe, the video is violent for the sake of being violent.
We all know M.I.A. likes to get attention, so it comes as no surprise that she would make a music video like this. I really didn't know what was going on in the video at first either, so I decided to do some research. According to Ian Harmick, the 12-year old red-haired actor whose character is shot in the head, the video was "showing violence to end violence." This makes plenty of sense, the more you see violence perhaps the more disgusted you'll become with it. Another theory comes from the Huffington Post, which states that M.I.A. is making a subliminal comment on the absurdity of genocide (of which she apparently saw plenty during her early childhood in Sri Lanka). I personally agree with the second theory. By showing random people getting beat up and tormented, M.I.A. is showing her dismay with how people are ruthlessly treated on a daily basis. She is protesting Darfur, Cambodia, the Holocaust, and any other genocides all in one simple 4 minute and 6 second song.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely avant-garde. It does serve to illustrate one's own prejudices though. When the viewer sees the red-haired people being methodically killed their attention is drawn to the fact that the genocide is against red-haired people because they are not a target commonly heard about. They get all the negative emotions associated with seeing a video about genocide and are piqued to wonder about real-life genocides.
ReplyDeleteI made a post on this video back in January and my take on it was that the lack of context was an important part of the message. It's hard to contextualize violence against Gingers in real history, so it highlights the absurdity of discrimination and genocide directed against real-world disadvantaged minorities. The message is made much more clear because of the fact that Gingers have never really been treated this way, since from the very beginning we're looking for an answer to the question 'Why would they do this?' which is the response we ought to have to any piece concerned with genocide.
ReplyDeleteM.I.A. is an artist particularly well known for spouting lots of radical philosophies, or at least creating a persona that is strongly associated with supporting these causes. While I think I commented on the randomness of the violence the last time someone wrote a post about this song, another thing that came to mind was the disconnect between the lyrics and the violence depicted. While listening to the song, I was not too sure what points MIA was attempting to put forth; in fact, the highlight of this song isn't so much the whatever the message is, the real merit lies in the shockfactor of the video...which quite obviously served as an effective draw for viewers to listen to the song. While the video hints at the senselessness of genocide, and that's all fine and dandy, my question is why is it paired with lyrics that seem so much like gibberish?
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