M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.
Most people I know seem to find this video either stunning for how graphic it is, or material for jokes. I, however, struggle to watch it a second time. I'm probably being melodramatic, but I find it very disturbing and unpleasant.
The video is 10 minutes of ginger genocide; gingers are rounded up in raids, driven off in a van and then made to run through a minefield. If they won't run, they're shot in the head. Violence like that is not novel or surprising, while the concept of ginger genocide is clearly unrealistic. It makes me wonder if I'm being oversensitive and should, essentially, lighten up. I might be ginger, but it's not like I'm Jewish, after all - what right do I have to get upset over this?
Yet it's not as simple as, I feel, it would be were it blonde people depicted. I'm not just watching lots of people I identify with being slaughtered; I'm watching them being slaughtered for something that I have been targetted for, by schoolkids and adults alike, many times. As much as it is clearly fictional, and I have no problem it being a source for jokes by my friends, e.g. "watch it or I'll go M.I.A. on you", the video itself is...unsettling, and that feeling took a long while to go. Am I wrong, or being silly, in this?
Either way, though, it's an interesting video. It's a shame the gratuitious fat sex scene seems to ruin its focus. I wonder if people think it made its point or whether it was just funny? Responses would be appreciated if people ever read this. :P
And I guess I just have to hope that if it ever did come true, people would have a better hiding place for me than behind the shower curtain. :P
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