First of all, before I say another word, if you click on the video below, please know it's not safe for work. It's violent, it has nudity and loads of profanity. If you click on it, I'm assuming you're 18 and you are okay with all of the following things, and really you're not going to send me a nasty email or tattle on me to the radio station or any of that. Are we cool? Because I'm dying to talk to someone about this thing.
M.I.A just put this out. Youtube banned it. Her record company Universal has a deal with Youtube and didn't throw their weight behind her. M.I.A went to Pitchfork and they let her use their twitter account to go crazy about it.
She should go crazy about it.
Yes this video is offensive. Duh, Middle America, it's supposed to be. The rounding up and execution of any segment of humanity is pretty freakin' offensive and yet it still happens. This isn't some future warning. This isn't a parable about the past, this is still happening in countries everywhere.
To a degree, it happens here. Look around, people are being denied rights because some dude somewhere decided they aren't worthy of them because of the color of their skin, the people they love, etc. So M.I.A's video show's this "ridiculous" vision of people with Red Hair being demonized. I'm sorry, but I don't see that as being very far off from anything that's currently happening in the world right now.
Judging anyone because their DIFFERENT than you is just, well stupid, like banning this video, which I completely believe is art. Good on M.I.A.
On that note, I'd like to hear the original version of the song, because I know it's not 10 minutes long.
EXPLICIT: M.I.A. - Born Free
Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup. - See the latest featured music videos.
I hadn't seen this video before, though I had certainly heard a lot about it. It's provocative, for sure. Graphic and scary in some places. Over the top and kinda silly (at least, in my opinion) in others. I wonder what the overall impetus was for making the video. Is it a political statement? Or just a clever way to market a new song? Either way, it's working because A LOT of people are talking about it.
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