M.I.A. And The Real ‘Bad Girls’

MIA has always been a fake revolutionary. her whole career is one as a rebellion-touring hipster, going to different locations and imitating the rebellion of the moment, so that she can attach her name to it in order to appear “edgy”.  and as the article stated, she feels she has the privilege to do this simply because her skin is brown. its nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

I think this is a really interesting article. I enjoyed reading it especially due to my own years in Sri Lanka. I interpreted the video not as containing any political message either, but also did not see this as relating or even evoking Egypt in any way. To me this is the Oman, Dubai style Arab World which is very unlike Egypt or Libya in the first place. I feel queasy about the video for some reason. I felt already queasy about her redhead killing one though.

I read somewhere that director Romain Gavras was inspired to film that after seeing online videos of youths doing car stunts, motorbike stunts and skateboard stunts in Dubai. Themselves were inspired by drifting and racing films. Maybe Gavras and perhaps M.I.A. wanted to show there’s more to the middle east than wars, oil, politics and serious current affairs. Like acknowledging the existence of those youths.  

I’m all for it if my guess is right. Exploitation? Maybe, but I think it’s needed in order to increase an awareness, even if a representation or issue is trivial. 

“ “Bad Girls” is just a hipper, high-definition stereotype of Arabs as desert-dwelling, sword-wielding, horse-riding, and dangerous.”

I don’t see them in the video that way. I was surprised when I saw those stunts and that was when I realised they were just like us. 

“culturefuck”, parallel to the concept of “genderfuck” in the LGBTQ community?”I’d say it does seem closer to co-opting and cultural appropriation than the glorious-bizarre mishmash and synthesis of genderfuck.

I too am a fan of MIA despite her somewhat problematic representation of Third World struggles, and of the conflict in Sri Lanka.  I like her sound, her beauty, and the fact that even though I disagree with some things she says, she is incredibly unique.  

One thing that strikes me: in her rush to essentialize the Middle East and North Africa despite being an outsider to that region, as you rightly show in this post, she missed an opportunity to engage in some very real social critique that could have gone beyond orientalist tropes – namely, the horrific working conditions and abuses against the thousands of Sri Lankan women (both Tamil and Sinhalese) who work in wealthy Gulf States.  

I get what your article is trying to say, and empathize with it to a degree even, but let’s not make it the burden of the brown artist to educate the West about the struggles of brown folk /all the time/. This video wasn’t really political. It was representative of youth car culture in Dubai, and it was dope as FUCK. It’s a great hip hop video, and i think that, in and of itself, is important. It connects the (arguably) most vibrant youth culture of the West (hip hop) with a lesser known culture in the Arab World. I actually read the video as positing the Middle East and North Africa in a different light than we usually the region. In the video she showcased the idea of “cool,” she showcased empowered women (they killed the choreo, and I see how this could be read as problematic, but I LOVED the visual of Arab women with guns. It suggested power that the West usually doesn’t ascribe to Arab women), and a really dope youth culture. I love the discussion that the article brings up, but I think the author kind of missed the point.

 M.I.A has always toed the line between Hipster and Radical, whether it be in courting controversy regarding Sri Lanka’s persecution of the Tamils, or when she flips off the camera during the Super-Bowl (which, by the way, I thought was perfectly justified since popular male rappers do it all the time).

That said, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt over others, such as Amy Sedaris. Why? Because M.I.A has actually lived globalization, structural racism and sexism, even though she now enjoys a fair measure of financial privilege.

More importantly, she actually cares about these issues, bringing focus and attention where others wouldn’t.

But this isn’t to condone exoticizing Middle-Eastern peoples, or to dismiss legitimate concerns of objectification of non-Western cultures, although certainly it feels that way. It’s rather my opinion that as an entertainer, particularly an entertainer of her background in an industry sorely lacking actual diversity, there is no inherent responsibility for her to always come correct. She shouldn’t have to be the voice for these issues just because she can.

Rather, let the activists deal with political vacancy, and let the musicians deal with playing music, even/especially when the two overlap. I don’t want to take art too seriously, lest I make the mistake of confusing the art for the artist.

I think you meant Lawrence of Arabia, not Casablanca.

Beautifully researched, well-thought and argued. Thank you!

I’ve always wondered how much our expectations of minorities play into things like this? Would people be as disappointed if MIA weren’t a lady of color? Would people be angrier or less angry? MIA has always struck me as someone using 3rd World chic to sell her self, but at the same time seemed reasonably trying to show people another view of life. 

kaej, what really frustrates me about your argument is that you’re so willing to argue that ‘Exploitation’ is okay, even ‘needed in order to increase an awareness’. In other words, a poor and one-dimensional representation of people who are not you is fine as long as you can gain ‘awareness’ of their existence and then be comforted by the knowledge that they are ‘just like us’. 

So, your right to consume one-dimensional images of people far away is being placed over and above the need to represent people with nuance, and without simply replicating the stereotypes that already shape popular Western conceptions of them.  This is dangerous (and arrogant) thinking, because if we learn anything from Edward Said (invoked in Ms. Yakupitiyage’s article, bigup!) it’s that representations matter. The point is that these images are seductive in the same way that those romantic sword-wielding images of old were, but just because they don’t seem outrightly insulting or derogatory it doesn’t mean they are harmless. While MIA’s intentions may be great, ultimately, they really don’t matter – these images will have afterlives that far exceed her good intentions.

Finally, these ‘youths’ go on existing whether you acknowledge them or not, and if anything, their continued existence is actually jeopardised by the skewed and reductive representations the article analyses.

p.s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwCOSkXR_Cw