(Thumbnail Image: miauk.com)
Singer-rapper MIA's nine-minute controversial new music video features American police rounding up redheads, beating them, putting them into desert-bound vans. Police shoot a child in the head and blow another up with a landmine.
The video has been pulled from YouTube and is the subject of a mountain of media coverage. Newsweek says it is part of a growing trend: the return of the "event" video.
"Not since the days of Michael Jackson's Thriller have music videos been so long, cinematic, and conversation-worthy... turgid, political faux-meaningfulness is the key to stardom."
And MTV News is not surprised about the video MIA produced.
"It's really shocking, it's really disturbing, it's really politically charged. But that's not very surprising given everything MIA has done up to this point and everything we have heard about this record."
The Guardian says Born Free is more than an "event" video with a message. It is a strong political statement.
"Subtle political commentary it is not. A crude metaphor for the treatment of minorities, it is."
Truthdig thinks the metaphor is offensive to the bigger political issues it represents.
"Discrimination is about real, historical inequalities that use difference to justify disparity... What political or cultural work does substituting red-haired people for actually-oppressed people really do?”
Gawker says the debate surrounding the content and message of the video is pointless.
"...is this little piece of entertainment — a music video, for heaven's sake — worse than what the people who have actually survived immigration nightmares, police brutality or genocide had to witness in their actual lives? Certainly not."
Even though YouTube pulled the video, the Internet has routed around this problem and MIA's "Born Free" is freely available on dozens of other sites including Vimeo and MIA's own website.
Writer: Amanda Klohmann
Producer: Newsy Staff
