- Across the continent, we are in the middle of an exciting African boom and a technological and leadership renaissance of sorts, led by the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the formerly colonized and enslaved. Waterfalls and mountains and majestic animals do not represent a full picture of our homelands.
Swift's music is entertaining for many. She should absolutely be able to use any location as a backdrop. But she packages our continent as the backdrop for her romantic songs devoid of any African person or storyline, and she sets the video in a time when the people depicted by Swift and her co-stars killed, dehumanized and traumatized millions of Africans. That is beyond problematic.
I was pretty appalled that she decided to make a video in Africa and not include any black people, but then seeing that she made a fucking colonial fantasy brings it up a notch. Astoundingly tone-deaf.
What's the alternative, if we're already romanticizing colonialism? Portray some natives as porters and guides? Servants? If you're going to do a colonial video, it's probably less racist to leave the natives out, because that could only add insult to injury.We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa
But that would be censorship. Sometimes to make a point you need to make things that may seem wrong. Showcasing things that we aren't proud of reminds us that things weren't always ideal, and that it DID infact happen.
There's a difference between censorship and choosing not to do something because it's a stupid idea.
And there's a difference between a stupid idea and an idea you disagree with. Personally I don't see it as a bad idea.
Sure, that's fine, but should Taylor Swift be making that kind of statement? Stuff like this needs to be treated really delicately. It's hard to do that in pop music. I haven't seen the video yet, but if the idea is just that it's a love story, why set it in that period at all?
See, that's where I disagree. Doing things delicately doesn't upset people. It allows them to stay passive. She has a listener base - an audience. It's a perfect platform to do such statements because of how far it reaches. Or are you saying that artists (even pop musicians) should just passively do songs about whatever just to avoid upsetting people?
See tacocat's response to me. Im saying that, if she were to try to make a statement, she should put some thought into it. But she isnt doing that. She's just throwing this romanticized and totally out-of-touch image out there. Hence my first reply where I said she just shouldn't have done it.
Sure. I was kind of being flip, because I think the critique that the video is too white is a bit off. I completely agree that the real problem is that the video was made at all. I assume that she and whoever wrote and directed the just kind of thought that it was pretty and that's where it ends. I doubt they put much more thought into it than that. Which kind of makes sense in this day and age. We seem to be at a point in our culture where money is really the king, and we can worship it in whatever superficial way we want. This video seems like an expression of that sentiment more than anything. What better way to express ignorance of the less fortunate than to trivialize the most down trodden people on earth?
I'm not giving anyone a pass for being dumb, so I hope you didn't read it that way. Willful ignorance might be less of a crime than blatant racism, but it's still a shameful thing to do. Anyway it's not up to the video's creators to decide if it's offensive; it's up to the people watching it. It is, however, up to the creators to decide if they want to learn from what others find offensive about it or not. We'll see, but I wouldn't bet my paycheck on it.
nah, of course not bruh. It just is what it is, haha. It's why I've had to filter a lot of these types of instances into the "lol, fuckin of course" part of my brain because it gets tiring. I think I'm just ambivalent at this point, is what I'm getting at.I hope you didn't read it that way
Not gonna lie, I spend at least five minutes playing a game of trying to find any black people in the music video. So far, I found one black woman wearing a green suit/dress. It's hard to tell what she was wearing because she was in the back and you see her for less than a second.
This is hilarious to me. Especially the part about the video being a colonial fantasy. Wow.