‘No Light, No Light’: White Supremacy all dressed up in a pop video is still White Supremacy

great post

With that “Dog Days” song, it’s not just that there are a bunch of ambiguously racialized Others in the video – it’s that they are multiples, duplicates, almost clones meant to celebrate the white woman’s glorious individuality.  People of color are all the same, and they’re dressed in what are obviously intended as cultural costumes, ie, clothes that signify some kind of “my people have always dressed like this since the ancient times because we are pre-modern/earthy” while the white woman’s clothes are individual/fashiony.  Also, the blue women do a lot of namaste-y stuff, which is probably meant to link them with Hinduism.  I mean, you could certainly have blue women with bee hives and glittery shift dresses – they’d be campy B-52s aliens – but this isn’t that.

And this is totally the outcome of lower-powered, lower-profile hipster racism and appropriation – everyone was always like “oh no, it’s just coincidence that I’m wearing a headdress, and I’m totally 1/16 Cherokee” or “I just happen to like this form of African music” but what was lurking underneath all the time was the lust to do something as repulsive, monstrous, Birth of A Nation-like as this dreadful thing.  And it is repulsive and monstrous – a white woman and her record company want to profit off of years of lynchings of black and brown men, of racist sexual panic (because it is a sexual threat in the video), of the hysterical climate of racism and Islamophobia that is even now gaining ground in Europe. 

Honestly, I had no idea the video would be so bad – this leaping grotesque of a man of color, animalized if not insectized, isolated and working evil against the innocent white world, causing the “fall” of a white woman (from virtue? white women will “fall” if they have social or sexual contact with men of color, which anyway is always already unwanted?)

It’s a disgusting and shameful spectacle.  Apology be damned – this should end her career.

Whether or not they *meant* it as a racist statement, the key thing is that they accept that whatever they meant is drowned out by the racist meanings embedded in the symbols they used. We may like to think that when we’re making art, we’re expressing ourselves as individuals… and we are… but we have to do that using tools that belong to everyone. Some of those tools are gunked up with foul, poisonous stuff. Best not to use those ones unless you want that foul poisonous stuff all over you and your attempted message.
I could accept the cluelessness defense from them, provided they pull the video, make a simple and subdued apology (not a non-apology, and not some tearful over the top attention-grab either) and go about educating themselves so they don’t make similar mistakes in the future. (Easy enough to do, with all the 101 blogs around!)I have been guilty of clueless insensitivity an embarrassing number of times (probably everybody is, unless they’re the magical person at the intersection of *every* ism.) Gradually I’ve learned that while the mistake can’t be unmade, it’s not the end of the world. But you have to be open to being removed from the center of your own universe. It’s a panicky feeling, but it’s good for you.

I love Florence + The Machine, but this video is so racist.  So, so racist.  I can see where the people were going – the man is supposed to be a demon, maybe?, not an actual human.  The religious imagery would support this.  But then, instead of painting him red and making him look like a non-human figure, they dress him up in blackface and throw every uncivilized/animalistic/dangerous to white women/heathen racist stereotype at him.  I want to believe that what they were going for was far from what they ended up with, but like the author here said – with all the people involved making this someone should have noticed the racism.

Amazing post. I’d also written about this, but you really hit the nail on the head. Especially this:

What these music videos show is the amount of misrepresentations around race that many (white) artists are able to use, all under the guise of “art.”

Because art has never been racist! I can see why people are trying to deny it though: the racism is so overt in this video that it’s hard to accept that it’s real, and not some sort of bizarro parody.
Here are my thoughts, if you’re interested: http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/11/well-lets-see-asian-man-in-blackface.html

“We may like to think that when we’re making art, we’re expressing ourselves as individuals… and we are”

Great point. I think what a lot of people don’t realize (or don’t want to) is that who we are as individuals is in part shaped by society and since we live in a society where racist imagery and beliefs are rife, it’s really no coincidence when such garbage is expressed in supposed works of art.

I am glad that you did a post on this too. The amount of foolishness I have seen on tumblr has made me tired. Some don’t even see the voodoo thing as a problem. Voodoo and other African originated religion has been demonized so much and misrepresented that nobody can even tell what is real voodoo. That stuff wasn’t even Hoodoo.

Someone called it Birth of Nation condensed into a Music video.

“… it is slightly astounding that not one person raised concerns about how problematic this video is.”

Is it really though? These kinds of productions usually aren’t very rich in terms of diversity behind-the-scenes so I have a hard time imagining there were many (or any) POC with a position of authority that could have called out the troubling themes. And since the people working on the video probably have the same ideologies as the fans defending it, it really would come as no surprise to me that not a single person raised concerns about the message the video was sending.

I was visiting my boyfriend in the UK a few years ago and saw a clip of the show and my jaw dropped to the floor. Then I saw that was still being shown during the late 70′s-really? Wasn’t there someone on Australian TV last year that went in blackface to do the Jackson 5?  I mean, really, if blackface needs to be a part of your costume or tribute, maybe you should think twice.

I love this idea that Brits don’t understand imperialism or racism. Um…in what universe?!

Or as Tolstoy would argue, if your art is misinterpreted, it’s bad art and you as an artist have failed.

I absolutely agree. I find the Dog Days video in a way worse than the No Light racist crap, because it is more subtle (ok, well, only slightly so). I think that the Dog Days imagery actually says a lot about what has to happen to make what these people imagine as a “post-racial” society possible: the Other has to be eliminated.

I mean, they literally explode, leaving an aesthetically pleasing colorful blur for the white woman to dance through! That blur, that’s post-racial. And the only person still standing is the white woman, colored up by having “appropriated” the dust left behind by the eliminated Other.

I adore(d) Florence and have been OD’ing on Ceremonials since late October, but that video is so racist–I (like the author) can scarcely believe it actually got made. The amount of unconscious privilege and ignorance Ms. Welch must possess… it’s really disturbing.

To all the fans of Welch:   this isn’t music.  It’s cross burning with a beat.  

I’m glad I’m not the only one whose antennae was pinging. I mean “Kiss with a fist” is a song that glorifies domestic violence, absolving the perpertator, and blaming the victim because “she fought back”! I think I can quite happily not buy Ceremonials after this.

Part of what I imagine to be a goal was accomplished. I’d never even heard of Florence + the Machine before this video came out–but now I have. Mind, I’ll never even think of purchasing, or even listening to, anything of hers as a result of this, but I suspect that, as usually happens, multitudes of “it’s not racist, stop persecuting her!” type folks will be rushing to buy it and show their support. 

A time honored marketing ploy that, sadly, works. 

…that you can dance to.

…that you can dance to.

Racism aside, the video’s just boring. Seriously, can there be choir boys standing under some fancy stained glass ceiling thing without someone falling through it? I guess it wasn’t cliché enough on its own so they had to throw in a scary blackface man.

I wonder that too! It doesn’t even fit. I’ve always interpreted the song as being about a failing/abusive relationship and they simply went too far into stylistic nonsense. I doubt Florence herself had much control over the video, but it’s amazing that no one else in her orbit put a stop to at least some of this. I feel like there are such simple things they could have done to keep the video largely intact and yet have nuance and not be this over the top racist/sexist, that it’s really sad it stayed as is. 

The Dog Days video was so hard to watch. I am so tired of people like Florence Welch and Gwen Stefani aligning themselves with things that are “ethnic” just to show how different and special they are. How different are you if you have to steal from other cultures? It’s just another case of how hard it is for whiteness to mingle with anything else without trying to own or steal from it. For the record, I love Florence’s music….but after seeing these two videos I am so confused an disappointed.

I agree with frowner. I’m also disgusted by the ending when all the people of color are being destroyed at the music apex.

it’s partly why i felt like i absolutely had to write about it elsewhere! i was so frustrated with their comments.

Oh holy fuck me for blindness. I’ve watched the vid twice before and not paid enough attention. I think watching it with the sound off helps, but… um, yeah.  Embarrassed now I didn’t see it. This is bad.

The more and more I think about this video the more it bothers me. Mostly because Florence + the Machine’s music is heavily influenced by gospel, particularly on Ceremonials, and in listening to it I wondered what kind of relationship Welch has with the genre. Now I know – flimsy, at best, as she clearly has little understanding of the culture and background such music came from, and it does not take much to see what’s wrong with this video. It makes me feel sad and icky that music I adored a week ago is starting sound more and more like trumped up appropriation.

you can’t say that it IS racist, just that that’s the way you’ve interpreted it, to me it just looks like simple light/dark imagery, i’m pretty sure no-one involved intended it to be offensive

I have to say that I am white and a great fan of Florence, but even I could see the racism in Dog Days Are Over and No Light, No Light. I still love the songs, but I refuse to watch those videos and I support any attempts to get those videos taken off the internet. Probably too late for Dog Days Are Over, but No Light, No Light’s video was deeply horrifying to me and I wish that someone had stopped this from being made.

You are absolutely right!  Black back-up singers serve the same purpose, but are less obvious and obnoxious.  When you don’t notice or care that you are using HUMAN BEINGS as props and the artistry of another culture to give YOUR work cultural cachet, hipness is the last thing you achieve.  Lazy, casual racism is more like it.  

A_Nonny_Moose brings up a point about Florence+ concerning the CONTENT of her previous song,”Kiss With A Fist” that had apologists and explainers and defenders falling all over themselves rationalizing how the song was obviously not about domestic violence — even though it could not be more plainly so. I really like how her music sounds — but this burden of problematic content should be addressed. It is not happening in isolation or coming from nowhere.

 There are a ton of people behind the product of Florence and the Machine. This is not the output of one independent artist making DIY recordings and video. Management, the record company, the video director, the writer,the art director casting agents, stylists, make-up artists,choreographers, etc.etc. all participate in creating this mess, which again highlight the bigger social problem that exists: people don’t seem to “get” that while they feel they are above the problems of representation, that they continue to perpetuate it.

I have never understood why the remade the “Dog Days” video. The first iteration was perfectly fine. This 2nd one really bothered me.

I have never understood why the remade the “Dog Days” video. The first iteration was perfectly fine. This 2nd one really bothered me.

I’ve come to this blog for a breath of fresh air from the ignorant masses. It’s very alarming the way people attack anyone who calls out racism, especially when it is this overt. Like Lyonside, I’ve unwittingly wrapped myself up in battles I can’t win with people who don’t care to see things from a marginal perspective. It’s a shame that people feel so comfortable calling people who try to address the problems of society as “overly sensitive” or “overly PC.” I wish more people like the commenters below would make their voices heard among the vehement deniers of racism. 

EXACTLY!! I mean no imagination whatsoever, recycled, reused shit that is so over-used that it’s trite and, frankly, pathetic. You know what I kept thinking about? The Madonna video with the Black Jesus! Been there, done that.

Exactly. I think doing so wouldn’t have taken away from the point of the video either, so it’s not as if someone should be throwing around an omg you’re tainting the art for the sake of your preferences argument. I don’t consider many things sacred and I am all for the right of artists to be provocative, but what I think a lot of artists don’t consider is that including these kinds of triggers actually DIMINISHES their message. Hang with me through this analogy: I am a professional editor. When I get an author’s work and it’s not up to standard, I have, in essence, two choices. I can come down hard and ask what the hell they were thinking with this trite, steaming turd, or I can say, I feel the tone isn’t quite working here because of this or that, maybe you could try *suggestion* ? Now, which one do you think the author is going to respond to? In the first example I’ve tasked them with wading through my nigh-cruelty to get to the part of my advice that may in fact be helpful to them. Faced with that kind of task, many would simply turn away and never do the required work. I feel that videos like this, where the racial statement isn’t even a conscious artistic decision (at least, it doesn’t read that way to me. Sometimes artists and comics include racial stereotypes for the purpose of skewering them or questioning them, but I don’t get that from this video) are much like that. If someone has to wade through hurtful things to grasp the heart of what you’ve created, it’s possible that you, as an artist, have failed. 

(not to mention if she’d only considered the race of the choir, the pursuer, how she herself presented, it could have been something very worthy, interesting, and perhaps appropriately provocative. The missed chance is a bummer in and of itself) 

There were  plenty of Blackface minstrels shows here in the UK and Al Jolson was huge in his day so “we have no Blackface in the UK” is simply false.  As Bell Hooks pointed out over two decades ago, Madonna has been doing this for ages; using Black people as props (Secret, Raiding Malawi); artistic objects to shock (Like A Prayer) and when not using Black people as as objects, for repositioning herself  on the Right.  Hard Candy was originally going to be Madonna in Blackface and called “Black madonna”. Florence like Madonna has no basis or experience to be playing with racial imagery and it is simply a very cheap PR tool.  She wants to play race and culture than be Boudica or a historical religious figure from HER background.  And let’s be honest; she became absorbed in the whole Couture d fashion house vortex (which we all know is really white , really racist and really unoriginal) because she’s not conventionally attractive nor that great of a singer.  She has to keep all the bells and whistles , Kate Bush rip off going to look less homely and dowdy that’s fine  and a time honoured tradition of show business but sadly to exploit and “kistch-ify very serious and destructive racial themes is not campy or quirky-just ugly.

THANK YOU!!

I love your article because at the end you have a suggestion for *what we should do about it.*  

We need to talk about this. Rather than telling people we don’t agree with to shut up and stop defending/allowing/accusing/overreacting we need to TALK IT OUT, as painful as that may be, until we can at least see where the other is coming from.  Without discussion this is all pain, no gain.

Wow! I’m astonished! Amazed even, by a collected well written response to what may actually be classified as good art in today’s pop culture. In a time, where so many individuals proclaim that they are open to change and embracing one another, so much energy is used undermining the strengths of another artist’s character. Thankful, am I, to be conscious of the difference between my brown skin and my white light. Cheers today, this day of mourning.

“The choice of imagery on the directors part was very poor, not only the
color of the man but the fact that they brought in voodoo, a
heavily stigmatized religion, and perpetuated the same old stereotypes. ”

Interesting that you pass the buck to the director.  Do note that Welch is considered an “artist” with her own Liberty print fabrics and high fashion tie ins, in control and “innovative” etc.  I’m just not seeing how this was the director’s fault. As for Dog Days etc, her black gospel choir fetish makes me uncomfortable. Very disappointing. I was never a huge fan but thought she at least had something new to offer. I think it went all wrong when she went “Vogue”. The high fashion world is VERY racist and constantly uses stereotypes and offensive imagery to get attention.  As many of us have noticed, just because  people of colour and Gay men are a large part of that world sadly does not make it progressive.  It stays apolitcal and when valid complaints are issued about 10 years olds in lingerie, black face models, severely thin models and tired and degrading images the fashion world collectively finds it amusing and funny that people are so “PC”.  As if to say “oh sorry, we’ll have an all Black or plus size cover next month or something, please do not get in the way of our narcissistic materialism till then…”  Florence Welch sadly seems to have latched onto that world of faux art / tired stereotypes because unlike Adele she’s not a diva who can rely on sheer vocal talent and unlike most of the others she’s not day glo bubblegum.

Exactly defenders of the video were saying “well that’s how voodoo is we have seen it many times in the media and that’s what people do”

um no, that is not voodoo or hoodoo which have been Misrepresented in the media since forever.

As much as I recognize your efforts; based on my experience and what I have read, resisting people who are adamant about something not being racist will actually wear you out. Then it can make you an apathetic- where you don’t care anymore. I wouldn’t waste my time on people saying it’s not racist, they’ll wear you out.

What do you think about “Girl with One Eye”? I find the lyrics of that rather disturbing as well.

While also speaks volumes in their confidence in the performer. If they ‘have to’ create a controversy with this kind of crap, then the performer can’t be very good to begin with.

It takes a lot to shock me when it comes to pop culture. Usually I’m that person going, “Oh yeah, shock appeal. YAWN.” But the “No Light” video actually shocked me. It’s appalling, and, like so many have said, I’m still trying to figure out how and why it was deemed acceptable. It’s insulting not only to non-whites, but to non-Christians as well, with so-called “primitive” spiritual practices linked with evil and wrong, and with the only way out being Christianity. Oh, and let’s not forget the completely retrogressive and racist happy ending where Florence ends up with a nice safe white man. The real shame to me is that the song is good, and it seems to me that the concept of the video was supposed to speak to unhealthy or abusive relationships. A video on that subject, when handled by Florence’s team, could have been really good, but they made the horrible choice of using racist imagery to express that idea.

I’d agree.  It is, however, making me seriously reconsider buying her new album.  

I watched the video without first reading the article – sound off as well – and felt it reeked more of Christianity > “Paganism” than it did White > Black, but considering the intertwined legacies of imperialism, racism and religious conversion, that could be seen as same difference in many of our eyes.  Because of that, I feel the author (who is a great writer – I have to say) dangerously toes the line between objective rhetoric and subjective rhetoric with her claim that the only clear, initial interpretation is “racist” (that’s what I took away – don’t want to put those words in her mouth), but I 100%, absolutely agree that the attempt to look past or justify the imagery with its obvious racial connections is just silly and ignorant.  Again, I thought it was more Christianity rules, Paganism drools, but the racial imagery is so obvious and just, well, dumb.

RACISM? WHERE?! Flo is a woman who has just gotten out of a relationship. She still loves this person so she holds on to his memory and all the negative energy that came with their relationship. It is making her self destructive, the asian man painted dark green with bright red lips tries to help her through a Balinese ritual dance called a sanghyang but she refuses because that’s all she has at this point. So he uses the doll to weaken her and force her to see reason.

RACISM? WHERE?! Flo is a woman who has just gotten out of a relationship. She still loves this person so she holds on to his memory and all the negative energy that came with their relationship. It is making her self destructive, the asian man painted dark green with bright red lips tries to help her through a Balinese ritual dance called a sanghyang but she refuses because that’s all she has at this point. So he uses the doll to weaken her and force her to see reason.