I tweeted yesterday about the new MIA video, a short, happy upbeat bit of bubblegum pop about a boy and a girl in love. It’s uplifting and heart warming, yet light and subtle. She’s clearly leaving politics behind and trying to challenge Taylor / Miley / Gaga / Ke$ha in the hearts of tween kids everywhere. Based on this video, I figure her next move is to team up with Justin Bieber for a saccharine duet, something that will show up on Glee within a month. Or maybe she’ll decide to give Jay Sean a run for his money, with a song called “Up.”
CAUTION: The video really is NSFW because of both violence and nudity. Also, you really don’t want to watch a 9 minute long video with graphic imagery at the office, unless you work at the SEC..
M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.
Another hippie vid claiming trying to portray the police as evil…… yawn. This from the same woman who claimed the Sri Lankan government committed genocide when they finally destroyed the terrorist group who had been sowing dissension for the past 30 years, and invented the suicide bombing technique.
Am I the only one who’s sick of/embarrassed by this woman’s exploitation of her (well, mostly her father’s) past? she was born in london, moved to sri lanka then india, and then was back in england by age 11. throughout she had little contact with her father. Then she went to Saint Martens, hardly a refuge for the underprivileged, where hse made a lot of celebrity friends. She is now married to a multi-multi millionare. And yet she continues to pose as someone from a much rougher background, continues to spout misinformation about a conflict that was settled in 2009 (for example the tavis smiley interview where she claimed that tamils were subject to genocide and kept in concentration camps, claims that no reputable group has echoed). I wish this woman would stop trying to promote her music by milking others’ pain.
Exactly. To be clear, I don’t believe the Sri Lankan government was innocent. There were real grievances, and there were legitimate groups protesting the Sinhalese government, such as TELO. But no government can continue to allow a radical militant group to operate within its borders. The LTTE were completely mindless morons who even attacked the Indian peacekeeping force, which was initially very sympathetic to the Tamil cause. Prabhakaran was initially mentored by RAW, as a matter of fact.
MIA is basically an exploitative little shrimp, who would be laughed at in any other country. It’s too bad hatred of one’s own nation is so prevalent in the USA.
I guess so, though it’s hard to tell when, like me, your baseline is a nation that is led by an Italian baby-sitter.
Focusing just on the video and the music, I have to say that I was a bit let down. Showing excessive police force is nothing new in videos or films, but I could have overlooked that if the music was good. As a song, it is not that catchy. Hopefully the rest of the album will be better.
This. There’s plenty to discuss without going there.
There is truly nothing novel or interesting about this video. What a letdown, MIA.
Nothing novel or interesting? Even if it is misinformation and propaganda, it is an interesting take on genocide. It’s one that allows white oft-detached Americans to put genocide in terms they understand ie. the genocide of the gingers.
Also,
There are plenty of people here who love America. We just don’t subscribe to the nationality-is-religion-and-skin-color ideology. ‘Cause that’s racist.
This was BRILLIANT. Wow. She’s a genius. I think this is an allusion to the Sri Lankan Tamils.
The video has just been pulled from YouTube in the US/UK:
I like her, but her work’s in decline. I blame her maternity. She should graduate to producer or get seriously inventive. Halfassing it is just depressing.
Youtube usually puts explicit content behind an age-verification thing. They don’t pull things unless they’re pornographic or demanded by copyright holders. And even the “sensual content” thing has wiggle room being as how Lady Gaga has music videos on there.
No thanks. I’ll pass on M.I.A.’s new album and go get the new AR Rahman album – Raavan.
I’m sick of her posturing now.
Really, really, really weak. The take home message of this video was, “Don’t round people up and kill them.” That’s a shallow slogan anyone would support, but certainly doesn’t amount to critical commentary of anything happening in the world. The sloppy allusion to Palestinians was stupidly done and inaccurate, and if it was indeed a reference to Tamils, the average viewer wouldn’t bother to follow up since it really doesn’t comment beyond that.
I’m all for being progressive and transgressive with your art, but this video makes no such point. Wow, I’ve learned that rounding people up and killing them is bad! I used to think it was ok to round people up and kill them based on their differing ethnicity, religion, gender, hair color, etcetera, but now I’ve changed my mind! Hey, that’s brilliant.
Yes, it’s a “metaphor”, but it’s stupidly done. The video looks like a seventeen year old wrote the script.
On top of that the song sucks!!! Why is she throwing us back to crappy late 1990s Chemical Brothers-esque “electronica”?
I’m going to go crawl back under my rock now.
Urgh. Suicide sample’s nice though.
I’m just happy that there is a woman in the music industry that isn’t forced to sing about love and how incomplete she is without a man or about her love of sleeping with random men.
My favorite Desi rapper is Nicki Minaj (half Indo-Trinidadian), her birth name is Onika Miraj.
I don’t care for MIA or Sabina England. Both seem to have a chip on their shoulder, and MIA condoned Tamil Hindu terrorism against Sri Lanka’s Singhalese Buddhist majority and Muslim minority.
Call me old school, but I prefer Lataji over the current crop of outspoken and provocative Desi female celebrities.
Yurty,
The Palestinian “al-Naqba” (Catastrophe) is not comparable to the status of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Tamils were brought to Sri Lanka as indentured servants by the British, the British Mandate of Palestine and Transjordan was partitioned under the Balfour Declaration to create a “Jewish homeland” in response to anti-Semitic sentiments and prejudice in Christian Europe. The settlement of European Jews from the Polish Pale into the heart of the Arab world as the ultimate act of colonialism.
Like when America created Liberia in Africa for “free Blackmen” to voluntarily leave America and resettle in Africa.
Many of the sectarian issues confronting South Asians are rooted in the policies of the British Empire. Queen Victoria favored policies favorable to Muslims at the expense of Hindus, the Anglo-Afghan wars which now haunt Pakistan’s standing in the NWF, partition of Hindustan, and the ethnic rivalries in Sri Lanka.
Mustafa: “The Tamils were brought to Sri Lanka as indentured servants by the British”
You’re forgetting the Tamils that lived in the NE for centuries well before the British arrived…
How people got wherever and who first is irrelevant once some time has passed. The European Jews are ‘Israeli’ and there to stay, and Israel can’t simply stop existing.
“Many of the sectarian issues confronting South Asians are rooted in the policies of the British Empire. “
They may be somewhat rooted in British imperial policies but they can only grow thanks to pandering and idiocy on the parts of the locals, you can’t blame the British for everything.
False. Learn your history. Tamil kingdoms in SL go way back.
Yes, European seizure of the Americas pales in comparison. (/sarc off)
Yes, no thousand years of Islamic invasions. Move along people, no strife until the British arrived. (/sarc off)
The leadership of the LTTE was virtually entirely Christian, including Vellupillai Prabhakaran himself. This was an ethnic conflict, not a religious one. Tamilians involved and or affected came from three religions, not just one. Additionally, the end goals did not involve the subjugation of the entire world to a single religion or way of life. While what transpired was undoubtedly terrorism, it was on the basis of ethnic sovereignty and separatism. Let’s be precise in our phraseology.
I am so glad that I am totally ignorant to all these things and I can just enjoy her for her music.
I agree: most of the seniors in the LTTE were NOT Hindus. Many were Christians, such as the assassin of Rajiv Gandhi. She was a Catholic. Also, many seniors in the LTTE are also atheists with communist surnames.
Like nails on a chalkboard. The video is best watched with the sound turned off.
What’s a communist surname? They actually change their name to things like “Lenin?”
“The LTTE were completely mindless morons who even attacked the Indian peacekeeping force”
Yeah nice….that of course had nothing to do with the atrocities committed by the IPKF. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Incompetence of RAW is one of Bharat’s main failings. Every potential RAW field officer should be sent to spend one year with CIA, one year with Mossad, one year with FSB (successor to KGB) to learn field skills and only then deployed against our enemies.
What the fuck are you people talking about? Since comment #19 this thread is incomprehensible.
I can’t stand MIA..and everytime something new of hers comes out…I try to give her music another chance..again..and again…and mind you..I’m very open minded when it comes to music…cuz I really want to understand why some people like her music..I really do…I hear electronica-ish stuff…and..yeah….it just doesn’t happen.. so. crass.
i love the song, has a hint of the prodigy about it, think it would be colossal live. can’t wait for the album.
anyway where are the supportive comments for the gingers? i know there are fiery desi reds in this world, where you at?
yeah, but if you let it ferment too long, you risk both kneecaps exploding.
Ugh, I keep trying to like her and I keep coming back to the same conclusion, over-rated, over hyped and what?? I’ve only ever liked one song of hers, Galang, and the reason I stumbled onto it was because it’s a pretty nasty/rude way of telling someone to move along in Jamaica, and so I thought it was a Jamaican dancehall song.
Oh and side bar, Onika Manaj aka Nicki Minaj, self identifies as black/African American, not Desi, so…..
This track has the energy and edge I want from her songs, so I’m optimistic about her new album. But don’t let me interrupt the haterade, kids!
when did ya’ll become such joyless scolds? If u can’t recognize the artistry in this video, and how the visuals and music go together so well, you need a good wedgie. it’s a fucking music video people. she is not commenting on the state of tamil elam, or what not. have u seen other music videos out there? And yes, it makes a very simplistic point which most people often forget. Rounding up people for being different and killing them is bad. It’s so simple yet it happens all around the world.
Listen to it loud on ur headphones with the video.
MIA’s posturing is getting OLD. She needs to get a life instead of acting like a victim and trying to “rep” the “downtrodden”….
The video itself is surprisingly kind of bland with the exceptionj of a couple of shock value shots of a teen getting shot ala Vietnam-Cambodia era pic and one of the gingers getting blasted. Maybe if they played this song along a ginger montage from South Park it would have been better!
The SONG itself is not bad. I liked it. Do you expect her to churn out a danceable hit every single time? Who cares if the sound is derivative. Should I stop listening to my White Stripes songs because Jack White can get derivative?
What IS Sussanne Roshan doing these days?
Pretty much. What else is she going to entertain us with, her marvelously trained voice? Profound lyrics? “Gon’ dash the curry like me nah in a hurry!” I don’t expect a hit each time, but she needs to recognize it’s her pop appeal that got her where she is career-wise, not her bleating politics.
Those damn Weasleys!
For those talking crap about Islam in terms of “imposing a way of life” on the subcontinent is completely rubbish. The Islam of the Mughals and previous invaders was Persianized. When Muslims came to the subcontinent, they intermarried with local Hindu converts and appropriated local Hindu traditions. The kathak, originally a temple form of dance, was patronized by the Mughal courts and the attire changed to be deemed more “modest” for Muslim tastes. The sitar, part of the pantheon of Indian music was created by a Turkic Muslim born in the sultanate of Delhi, this same man created the tabla —– Amir Khusrow in the thirteenth century. The sitar is similar to the Persian setar. Islamic culture became inseparable from Hindu culture in India. The Islamic invasions of India were more appropriately an era of Persian colonialism. Mughal architecture, enshrined by the Taj Mahal and Hamayoun’s Tomb, is indebted to the architectural styles of Iran’s old imperial capital, Isfahan.
The Islamophobia apparent by many in Sepia Mutiny is no different from my animosity towards the Lahore Resolution which gave rise to the idea of Pakistan, and the political momentum to create an Indian Muslim commonwealth. As a Pushtun nationalist, I have my own biases.
However, the pogroms waged by the Tamil Tigers to ethnically cleanse the northern coastal regions of Sri Lanka’s Muslims even in the past decade is inexcusable. Just like the ethnic killing of Gujarati Muslims, including a woman carrying a fetus.
I am no Muslim chauvinist. I engage in things deemed “bidah” and “haram” by more conservative Muslims. I can eat a pork chop discreetly during an iftar meal to break the fast of Ramadan. I pair white wine with my fish tikka and red wine with a beef biryani.
And why should a South Asian Muslim have to apologize for things in the past? Most Muslims in the subcontinent, are nothing more than DESCENDANTS OF LOCAL CONVERTS! We are no less indigenous because Mecca’s Kaaba serves as our holy focal point and not the Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin and Varanasi.
@ worf,
As for Israel, I believe Israel has the diplomatic right to exist but within the Green Line of Control (pre-1967 borders). As for the status of Jerusalem or al-Quds as known in the Islamic world, the city should be shared. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane.
Israel guarantees political freedoms for Jews, political freedoms few Arab Muslims and Christians enjoy in their respective countries. However, even the status of Israeli Arabs (ethnic Palestinians with Israeli citizenship) is subordinate to the legal status of Jews. Israeli Arabs are excluded from living in most of the country, they are confined to less than 100 recognized Arab neighborhoods since the 92% of Israel is “nationalized lands” which are reserved for the exclusive right and usage of Jews.
If that’s not legal apartheid, I don’t know what is.
I don’t condone terrorism at all, I reject all forms of terrorism for the purposes of gaining or achieving a political goal. As a Pushtun nationalist, you would never hear me praise the actions of the Taliban considering their poor record on human rights towards their fellow Muslims. Their Islam is abhorrent, going against the Sufi strand of Islam that came to the subcontinent.
@ AnjaliToo,
Nicki Minaj has a “classic Desi female physique” which reminded me of Meera Nair’s Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. So she doesn’t identify with her Indian heritage, that doesn’t mean she is not a product of the South Asian Diaspora. She should call herself “Blasian” which is what she is. When I first saw her on MTV’s Hitlist, I was like, is she Desi? Her face and thighs and “junk in the trunk” is definitely Desi!!!!!
Mariah Carey is Afro-Venezuelan, but claims to be “Black.”
@ Mustafa,
I pointed out Nicki Minajs self identification as black or African American because I took umbrage to your classification of her as strictly Desi because it indicates a welcome to the community to which for the most part, we half black half Desi types are not privy, which either forces the black self identification or makes it more comfortable, product of the South Asian diaspora or not. And as to her….eh em ….assets, I see more of the African in her very fit physique rather than Desi, I’ve never seen ANY Desi woman with an ass like that brother, sorry. And Mariah Careys’ father is Afro-Venezualan, her mother is Irish I think, and she’s not claiming to be black, according to the rule of hypodecent, she is black, pale as she is, but really beyond that, her self identification as black is most probably a comfort level thing, and if she says she’s black who is anyone to say she’s not?
Anyone find it ironic that this video comes out basically when Arizona passes a law that makes it legal for cops to ask you for your birth certificate if you look like an immigrant and if you dont have it in your pocket(and who doesnt) then you will be arrested? The video may be hyperbolic, but it is not far from the truth from what looks like an ugly situation in Arizona.
I can picture a cop having a bad day in Arizona and he decides to put a bunch of brown people in a truck and drives them off to the desert and tells them to “run home!”
And the Hapas have a strangle hold on the term Blasian, so my friends and I have coined the term Blindian ; )
I never thought I see the day when I would see a battle between Indians and blacks for the rights to claim a bisexual that over raps everything. Nicki should be not be claimed by anyone because she is the worlds problem now and we must work together in stopping this walking rhyming dictionary.
@ AnjaliToo,
Indians and other South Asians claim membership in a pan-API category that includes East Asians and SE Asians. Now when Americans think of “Asian,” Asian Indian and Pakistani do not come to mind.
“Hapa” originally referred to people of mixed Japanese ancestry in the state of Hawaii, where people don’t look at women wearing saris/shalwar kameez and a mehndi as “Asian.” That’s the reality SM! So when Kal Penn gets mugged in DC and his phone stolen, which SM didn’t report surprisingly, Joe Smith in Arkansas isn’t going to say that is an Asian victim of crime.
In Britain, the racial categories are different. American colonialism in Asia was in the Philippines, where people have an epicanthic fold. Whereas on the subcontinent, you have a person with a “buttery” complexion and a aquiline nose or skin darker than some sub-Saharan Bantu Africans. So where as in Britain “Asian food” conjures up images of vindaloo, in America “Asian food” conjures up images of pho, sushi, and pancit canton.
Identity is complex. Just like not all South Asians identify as Desi. My Nepali friends don’t call themselves Desi even if they were the last Hindu monarchy in the world. Tibetans in China’s autonomously controlled region of Tibet don’t use the term and neither do people from Afghanistan.
@ ShallowThinker,
I ain’t from Bharat/Hindustan, my peeps are from Pushtunistan (southern Afghanistan/Pakistan’s NWF)!!!!!!! Anyways, the girl may not claim her Indic roots, but her music is better if less political than MIA’s. MIA ain’t pretty in my book.
The law in Arizona will affect South Asians who are mistaken for being Mexican. However, I doubt they will enforce it though. All naturalized citizens, including high caste Brahmins and high class Muslim Syeds with those “buttery” complexions and aquiline noses will have to produce papers if stopped to prove their legal right to be in this country.
This piece of legislation is not constitutionally grounded, however, people have profited from cheap Mexican labor, including South Asians.