Critics lambast Swift’s video ‘Wildest Dreams’.
By Raif Karerat
Follow @ambazaarmag
Taylor Swift, fresh off her Twitter feud and subsequent reconciliation with Nicki Minaj, is courting controversy once again, this time with her newest music video.
Her video for “Wildest Dreams,” which she premiered during Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, is being castigated for romanticizing white colonialism and for using Africa as a setting for an entirely white-cast video.
The video portrays Swift as an early-20th-century movie star who falls in love with her married co-star while filming a movie in Africa. In it are rolling shots of the African landscape, plenty of African fauna, yet no African people whatsoever.
Following the music video’s release, NPR had some choice words about the realities of colonialism for country-turned-pop singer:
Here are some facts for Swift and her team: Colonialism was neither romantic nor beautiful. It was exploitative and brutal. The legacy of colonialism still lives quite loudly to this day. Scholars have argued that poor economic performance, weak property rights and tribal tensions across the continent can be traced to colonial strategies. So can other woes. In a place full of devastation and lawlessness, diseases spread like wildfire, conflict breaks out and dictators grab power.
It isn’t the first time Swift has been accused of accidental racism and cultural appropriation in her work. Her video for “Shake it Off” drew similar criticism last year for its depiction of Swift in gold chains and hoop earrings crawling through the legs of a multitude of twerking black women.
While Swift has yet to comment on the fiasco herself, Joseph Kahn, who directed the video along with “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood,” has adamantly defended the video, insisting it’s not racist in a meandering statement to Entertainment Weekly andtweeting, “My long time producer Jil Hardin who did Power/Rangers, Blank Space, Wildest Dreams is a (super hot) black woman FYI.”
The Huffington Post’s wry response was perfectly immaculate: “So it totally can’t be racist, right? Especially since she’s not just kinda hot or lukewarm hot. Solid defense… we now have some advice for filmmakers. Just hire a good-looking black woman to work on all of your projects and feel free to be as racist and sexist as possible. Free pass!”
2 Comments
In answer to the headline question, no she was not being racists, and also the video had nothing to do with making colonial Africa look good or bad. The so called critics just plain got it wrong and cried wolf.
There are two blacks around 1:33 by what looks like an old land rover. They are wearing what appears to be tan uniforms and have guns. I do not know if they are Africans or Americans or Dutch, but they are there. I have looked at several rap videos (both male, and female) saw NO white people in any of them. The video is not about colonialism, it is about a dream of a young woman being in a movie set in Africa,