Released on Monday, removed from YouTube the same day, reinstated with an "age restriction", then taken down once more (and possibly for good) on Tuesday. The life of MIA's new video seems destined to be a nasty, brutish and short one. Unlike the video itself, which at nine minutes of gruelling, dystopian terror, is nasty, brutish and quite long.
It's quite short, however, for something that sets up such a complicated premise, opening a bee-barrel of questions and potentially thorny issues, and then just complicating them with extreme violence. But then, you would probably expect that to be the case if you hired Romain Gavras to make your promo. You might remember him as the director of the video for Justice's Stress, aka the last time people got all "Ban This Sick Filth!" about a music promo.
Which makes for an interesting point of debate – and precisely the one that MIA and Gavras might have hoped people would have when watching the video – about the relative shock of seeing one ethnic group rather than another rounded up and treated as little more than vermin.
Which seems a shame. As with other videos from Gavras, the whole thing is beautifully composed and searingly painful to watch in the main; it's just these extra characters end up exploding the whole concept.
(Sorry, that was spectacularly tasteless. Which at least makes me a possible candidate for plotting a promotional advertisement for any artists planning on releasing a pop video in the near future. Usual contact details apply.)
<p>Here, in summary, is the basis of this year's version of a controversial super-violent short film/promo for a new single: a set of grim looking policemen are conducting raids on grimmer-looking blocks of flats and targeting only young men with ginger hair. These men are rounded up, put in armoured buses, and taken away.<p>There is a suggestion that there is some kind of movement to resist this state-controlled ginger-genocide, but whatever it is, we only see a glimpse of it in this film. Anyway, when the red-headed young men arrive at their destination – a desert – they're told to run for their lives, into the sunset. And when they pause, one of them (the youngest) is shot point blank in the head.<p>Unsurprisingly, this is one of the moments that YouTube users have complained about. As visceral and thought-provoking as it may be, it also contravenes terms and conditions about levels of violence in user-uploaded content. Oh.<p>And that's not the only reason it's controversial. MIA says that it's not a direct comment on a particular political situation – and since much of her lyrics touch on real situations of conflict and ethnic cleansing, that's completely plausible. But the fact is that it's coming out at precisely the same time as a law proposed in the state of Arizona that will allow police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant. Unsurprisingly, much heat is being generated by news organisations and political blogs that see the video as a direct response.<p>But then, from another point of view, this powerful message is diluted by the fact that Gavras, again, seems to pack random "shocking" images into the film, for no apparent reason other than to say "LOOK! Overweight naked people! They're having sex, even though they're FAT! And here in the next room there's a nice old man smoking crack! Ooooooh, isn't it shocking!"<p>Although, in fact, the idea of consensual obese sexual congress and class A drugs for senior citizens are considerably less offensive or shocking than shooting children in the head. So why are they in there? It's not a part of the film that adds anything or contributes to the story, the message or the issues. It's more like the News at Ten opening with Huw Edwards shouting "POO BUM WILLY TITS!" before launching into the headlines.<p>And frankly, there are already enough exploding characters.
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