Are We Born Free....

The following video is quite graphic but it is meant to make a statement. Beside all the recent NME article M.I.A has remained who she is and was born to be a Rebel solider. Her status has changed as a mother and wife but she is still one of the most political critics of not only music but of governmental institutions.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

My personal feeling on this video are at first enjoyment for seeing a bunch of Caucasian detainees getting fucked up but then going through the emotional spectrum I feel akin to their plight. It’s the same plight brown people; hell any political peoples of any hue share. Its the rage of governmental authority profiling a people based upon parameters of sex, ethnicity, culture, or any other classification of there choosing to discriminate against and find their twisted justifications for. The use of a Caucasian minority, people with red hair, being imprisoned and put through a tortuous field course is a parallel to what certain minorities go through in larger governmental structures.

I do however have to points to make about scenes, there are three boys in the video who are wearing kaffiyeh, Pakistani militant scarf’s, as they through rocks at the passing by governmental convoy carrying off other red-haired peoples. I just found it a bit subtle how they wove into the video as a item of militant rebellion, unlike its co-option as a fashion stance. Also more than likely most people of reddish colored hair are of north-western European descent, i.e. Irish or of the British isles. As we all know there has been long standing "terrorist" attacks from the IRA, Irish Republican Army, I'm not keyed into the filmmaker’s ideas but to me the usage of people with red hair rings truer to people of a Euro-Caucasian background. To them the IRA is "real" is a terrorism that is tangible to them. It’s not a foreign person of another ethnic group they don't know anything about. It's logical to make the, albeit crude, leap of red-hair = Irish, red-hair terrorist = IRA member. It's a relativity approximation of what terrorism is. With that said this video in my mind's eye is M.I.A's and Romain Gavras's attempt to broaden the view of the war on terrorism its ill effects on those involved and make it digestible in all it's tasteless bit and piece's we wouldn't want to see - seen.