on MIA's "born free"

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

"does MIA's genocide video go too far?" is the question asked in mary elizabeth williams' music column in yesterday's salon, and the short answer is: yes. the longer answer is: yes, thank god. I've embedded it within this post and I'm not going to give away much of the 9-minute video's plot, but I do want to warn you away from it if you aren't willing to watch uncompromisingly brutal and realistic violence. not the violence of the saw films, all gratuitous gory splash, but the quiet, personal violence of history and reality normally hidden from us.

it's powerful in all the right ways and does damage to our sense of being outside it all. the director, romain gavras, son of the immortal costa gavras, imbues "born free" (the ending minutes give us a greater sense of the irony of that title) with the closeness of active involvement. we can't pretend we aren't a part of what's going on in the rounding up of a despised social segment: we are the eyes and ears watching and participating, and if there was such technology available, we would feel the clubs in our hands and the blows on our backs.

MIA and gavras are no limosine liberals, but even if that epithet held, it can't take away from the power in watching people rounded up and dispatched. released the same week arizona passed a law I argue is a first step toward the video's reality, and in the same country that imprisons enemy combatants in a lookalike guantanamo after rounding them up in similar situations that play out in the first minutes, this is a harsh, dispiriting, ugly little movie. is it provocative? of course. is it meant to sell MIA, copies of her album, and her agenda? so what. that's the market. this is a literal personification of natalie merchant's lyrics from "candy everybody wants": "if lust and hate is the candy, if blood and love taste so sweet, then we give 'em what they want."

if you can stomach it, and not just the violence but the violent impact it will have on you, you should see it. between this video and erykah badu's recent "window seat," it seems that at least two women of color are pressing the spit beyond the flap of the envelope and as far across the table as it will last.