Gavras & M.I.A.'s "Born Free"

We have something very valuable living as citizens of the United States: the right to freedom of speech. This matter isn't really ever brought up as an argument anymore unless the situation at hand is truly shocking. There is a breed of musician that could belong to any genre, but always incorporates politics and shock value in its work. One such musical act is Mathangi Arulpragasam, more commonly known as M.I.A. Ironically, she isn't American. But I am always hyperaware of my American citizenship when I listen to her music and watch her music videos.

Something I realized with this musical act is that I like her for her identity and music videos more then I like her music by itself. This doesn't discredit her in any way because honestly, this is a large part of being a well known musician in the 21st century. When I think of M.I.A., I think about her personal story more then anything, but there is one director that helped set Maya apart: Romain Gavras. Gavras is a French Greek filmmaker who seems to specialize in shock cinema featuring oppression. Before "Born Free," Gavras worked with Justice for their "Stress" music video.

The pacing on his videos is always fast and the music is the driving force. And no matter what, it seems Gavras and Arulpragasm don't hold back. Violence seems to occur randomly and at any moment after the first minute of the video. In "Born Free," red-haired males are targeted. The is obviously a satire/metaphor for other minorities. M.I.A. is wanting you to wonder, "Why are they hurting redheads? That's so silly and uncalled for." Every time the unmarked SWAT team soldiers perform an action, they seem to do so with extreme force. 

The video was originally released in late April of 2010. I remember my awesome English teacher/school newspaper supervisor talking to our class about the video before she started teaching that day. A few hours after the video was uploaded to YouTube, it was removed by the Google enterprise. It was the first time I truly witnessed such immediate censorship by a large company in the public eye.

MTV commended them for their video. Reporter James Montgomery eloquently wrote that what really seemed to spark a controversy was "the real parallels, of which there are many: 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 against minorities by government forces all over the world. It's a credit to M.I.A. and Gavras that they don't shy away from any of them: removing the flags from the uniforms of the police officers would have diluted the statement."    

                                         

One can easily see why M.I.A. isn't afraid to approach such controversial matters. She grew up in a Tamil town in Sri Lanka. Her father was a founder of the activist group EROS. Maya was raised in the Sri Lankan civil war living a life of fear. She hardly saw her father and she experienced oppression from soldiers every day. EROS was affiliated with the LTTE, the rebel group fighting the Sri Lankan military. Living the displaced life of a refugee definitely defines Arulpragasm's music. She started as a video artist in Britain. Her visual style in her videos is still prevalent in all of her work. It's always extremely bright with lots of .gif art.

Gavras worked with M.I.A. again in 2012 for her "Bad Girls" music video. You won't find the shock value in it that's present in most of Gavras' work, but he definitely isn't done with this theme. The same year he worked with Jay-Z and Kanye for their "No Church in the Wild" video. 

My point with this blog post is to know the back story of your artists. A lot of them have motivation behind their messages.