M.I.A. is without doubt the most important artists in popular music today. Yes, for all you long time M.I.A fans it may burn you to read "M.I.A." and "popular" in the same sentence, but it is clear that M.I.A. is sitting nicely just on the edge of the mainstream. If you need proof, just listen to everybody at your local club sing along and blow the brains out of their mate next to them when "Paper Planes" is played. So, why is she so important?
M.I.A.'s music is restless. She never stays still, from one song to the next, M.I.A. is constantly challenging her audience with her unique sound and unsettling messages. She is a musical chemist; mixing disparate materials together to create a simultaneously bitter, sweet, uncomfortable but satisfying syrup. M.I.A. represents the new cosmopolitan west; she looks like a girl from Columbo, yet sounds like a bird from London. M.I.A. has an authentic political conscience. Her lyrics are devoid of empty platitudes as her experience as a refugee from war give her stories a rare legitimacy. "Pull up the People", M.I.A.'s first foray into my ears, was such a revelation to me. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Pummeling and uncompromising, it musically and lyrically echoed the tension felt in her homeland of Sri Lanka, a place of much less media friendly wars than the wars involving a bunch of yanks trying to kill a bunch of "moosies". Arular, the album in which that song is from, in its totality was so fresh, so exciting, so exotic. In short, M.I.A. is the artist that musically represents all that is frightening and fascinating about the world we live in.
Why all these silly adjectives? Why all this love? The shitstorm that arose as a result of M.I.A.'s confronting new-ish video "Born Free" angered and baffled me, so I had to react. In case you haven't seen the video, it is below.
Firstly, the song is wonderful. Using an obscure Suicide sample, this track shows that M.I.A. continues to be at forefront of innovation in pop music, and many of her contemporaries such as Lady Gaga are about five years behind her.
But that is not what has stirred me. As you can see, the video centres around a bunch of American troops rounding up redheaded adolescent boys and taking them to their deaths. It may seem a little trite to portray America as the baddy (Avatar took it to mind-meltingly horrid levels), however its underlying political message is timeless and eternally relevant. It wonderfully and sharply lays bare the idiocy and lunacy of persecuting swathes of people solely based on their race or religion. However our brain-dead, paranoid, and ignorant society has spoken and have deemed the video offensive, and as a result YouTube felt compelled to pull the video. I am a redhead myself, and was in no way at all offended by this video. I was actually heartened by it, as it brilliantly uncovers the blantant double standards present in our society when it comes to racism and bullying (I am referring to the "can't say a bad word about black people, but redheads are fair game" attitude which seems to pervade Australian society today).
What is more poisonous to society? A video forcing introspection on our at times western superiority and insularity, a video that exposes the madness of war, genocide and persecution; or a video of a untalented 16 year old boy attempting to sing at a pitch audible only to dogs that makes teenage girls lose all self-control and riot? M.I.A. posed this exact question recently. It seems to have been dismissed as a laugh, but I take her comments very seriously.
By joking that Justin Bieber's video's are "more offensive" than her own controversial offerings and that they are an "assault to her eyes and senses", M.I.A. subtly rammed home an uncomfortable truth about the state of the music business and western media consumers' extended embrace with mediocrity. To turn around and accept Bieber's dross, and ban M.I.A.'s video, YouTube are moving into dangerous territory. Censorship of M.I.A's art in this instance is a reaction to ridiculous, hypersensitive hysteria.
It is of course absurd to expect YouTube to ban Justin Bieber, but to ban M.I.A. and allow this rubbish to exist is absurd. M.I.A's video may have caused people to think. Bieber's videos have caused undeveloped brains to riot. Which is more offensive now?
M.I.A. is the one artist who personifies the broader planet Earth, circa 2010. Justin Bieber encompasses everything that is wrong with our western mass media culture.
2 comments:
Wow dude!
Just about to write something as identical to this i love M.I.A too and she should be congratualted on such an awe inspiring video, possibly the music video of 2010! sure its graphic, but the world we live in NEEDS to see how idiotic our society is..and YouTube ban it, typical... it was a great read, thanks:)
When I first watched that clip I was pretty disturbed but it is fucking amazing as is she.
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