The Huffington Post stated "Whether it's a comment on the absurdity of genocide (of which M.I.A. saw plenty during her early childhood in Sri Lanka) or a challenge to the idea of "other" in Arizona's immigration law, it is startling even in the context of recent genre-bending music art-films." Zach Baron, writing in Village Voice added "NSFW isn't exactly the word. More like art film? We can think of no goofier political allegory than the persecution, abuse, and murder of redheads, but then again, M.I.A.'s politics have never been of the kind you read about in the New York Times."James Montgomery of MTV described it as "unflinchingly, unapologetically real" depicting "the kind of things that most nations — including the U.S., which is portrayed as the aggressor in the clip — often pretend don't happen: the rounding-up of ethnic minorities, the trampling of personal liberties, the bullying of the powerless by those with authority." Real life parallels were drawn with the "ongoing issue of immigration in states like Arizona, the treatment of prisoners by U.S. troops at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and, more universally, the brutal tactics used against minorities by government forces all over the world."Salon described "Born Free" as "the most violent music video in ages -- and a nine-minute masterpiece" adding that "M.I.A. has built a career on making music that's as outspoken as it is danceable" and described the video as "undeniably powerful, a lurid parable on the systematic ethnic cleansing that goes on all over the world." Eric Henderson in Slant stated "what stuck with me is the furious dignity it accords the main tracksuit-wearing prisoner, and the amount of anger it allows him to deliver....I recognized within him and the band of rock-throwing dissidents that pelt the armored bus a sense of kinship relevant to anyone who occupies a minority class."
M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.
Be seeing you.
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It seems soceity has become hardend to such visual snuff movies.
ReplyDeleteThe jihad against Ginger has already been happening. The National Geographic reported a few years ago that in about a hundred years redheads will cease to exist. Reds used to be quite common for thousands of years. Some of the Egyptian mummies have red hair, and they existed in ancient Rome, Greece, even in central asia. What you depict on the video is happening to white people in America--you only need to follow the FBI and the SWAT teams to see just exactly what was created here. Also, millions of white people have been enslaved throughout history--in Africa by the Arabs, by the Romans in the centuries before they fell, by the British--what they did to the Irish, in fact, American slavery began with white people and it was into that system the Africans were brought. Today, Eastern European women are kidnapped by the thousands and forced into sexual slavery in the Middle East and Israel. When I was in the United Arab Emirates, my Arab friend pointed the out to me and explained how they were captured.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to worry about Gingers being snuffed out--they already are.
Ralph: .... I am not worried - well i wasn't - actually NOW i am - but i don't think that was the point here. i figured Gavras picked redheads because - as i have seen when showing the film to my circle of friends - of a quality that i dubbed "voted most likely to recover quickly from the bias induced by one's ego when one's ethnic group is focused upon by a work of art or literature". we all related what we see and hear to ourselves. few of us realize how very very different individual experiences are. most thin that what they take for granted is what others do. getting beyond this somehow is crucial to humanity finally getting past this bottleneck in our development - by which i mean the looming threats of human-engineered catastrophy and/or the imposition of restrictions upon consciousness that are not only totally unnecessary by also retard our growth and limit potential. it seems to boil down to somehow not thinking that other human beings are just us - over in that body. i think he meant the gingers to stand for any oppressed people - blacks in america, all inner city dwellers, all poor, persecuted, in a society with a militarized police force, will see themselves reflected. i think the point & goal is to wake people up to the fact that these sorts of things are not things that happen to 'those other people' - if it happens to one of it it could happen to any - and it creates its own resistance...
ReplyDeleteIs there a way to get the embeddrd
ReplyDeletecode to post this video here?
http://snardfarker.ning.com/
Thank you,
cjw
cjw: click on the 'vimeo' in the bottom right - takes you to a new window - there is an "<>"there, or the word 'embed' (i forget) - click on it! and my regards to snardfarker & assoc. blessings.
ReplyDelete