Art in motion

In the world of music videos art is often forsaken for cheesy performance pieces and half-naked women. Some musicians, very few unfortunately, can make their music even more meaningful and relevant with a well thought out, well produced music video. Case in point M.I.A.

Monday M.I.A released the video for the first single off her third record "Born Free". The Romain Gavras directed clip is violent, and hard to watch but shows the true arbitrary nature of racism and persecution. In the video U.S. SWAT team agents (or some government entity) plow through an apartment complex, beating people who get in their way until they find the red-haird man they are looking for. They take the man and put him on a bus with other red-haired men when it becomes clear the police/military force are singling out and capturing red-heads. The caravan passes red-haired "rebels" as they throw rocks . The caravan ends in a wasteland where the men are released and shot at while they run away.

The video captures the true pointlessness, and arbitrary nature of racism. Why would they be targeting men with red hair? Why then is any particular group targeted with violence and oppression? Using people with red hair rather than brown skin makes the point even clearer to the viewer because one would never think someone could be judged by the color of their hair. If people can be oppressed and killed because of the color of their skin then why not their hair? It is all random.

As someone from Sri Lanka, M.I.A. has seen meaningless oppression of the Tamil people for years and reflects on what she sees with this video. Racism has no deeper meaning, hate is right on the surface, people can hate based on the color of someone's skin, hair, anything that sets them apart.