Last week’s MTV Video Music Awards will likely be remembered as a hot-bed of drama, social issues, and controversy, spurned by the likes of Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, and Kanye West. The slightest mention of the awards show is enough to disturb the silence in any room. This is the effect of popular culture at its finest.
But, there is one music video which can be distinguished as emblematic of the whole controversy, released during the award show and drawing attention to the reflective nature of said popular culture: it is fuelled by the cues of our society and what we deem to be acceptable. Or, in this case, what can not be deemed acceptable.
The plot-line of Taylor Swift’s ‘Wildest Dreams’ is easy to understand: intended to complement the sorrowful lamentations of a doomed relationship, Sunday night was witness to a dark-haired Swift posing sadly as the star of a 1950s Hollywood film against a backdrop of what can only be described as the most colonial of images of Africa.
With Scott Eastwood as the object of her affection, her relentless glances at him are not enough to provide the pair with a happy ending and so, the glamour is for nought and the drive into the sunset is non-existent. So too, as many of us have picked up on, is the presence of non-white Africans.
Reductionist at best, Swift’s ‘Africa’ is stereotypically conveyed with all the patronising ignorance of someone imagining what would constitute as The Exotic Land of Africa, a colonial illustration leaving out the knowledge of it being a continent, complex, rich in many histories, and therefore difficult to package and sell so neatly. Still, it did not stop Swift’s creative team from trying.
So Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams video was filmed in “Africa” but what country? Also, why does it only contain animals and white ppl #Taylor
— Lena Olson (@LeynuhPawp) August 31, 2015
Rather than using Africans as props in her new music video, Taylor Swift just sticks to white people… http://t.co/CSMBNMf2sb — Tom Murphy (@viewfromthecave) August 31, 2015
From the depiction of rolling grasslands, wild animals in migration patterns, dry dust flying as Swift kisses her co-star in her throwback hunter outfit, the video enables the audience to see all of these things as mere accessories.
The romanticism of this history is a clumsy, heavy-handed act which calls to attention an out-dated racial hierarchy and is scarily reminiscent of colonial attitudes
They are ambiguously, stereotypically ‘African’ enough to contribute to not only the myth of Africa, more at home in a historically out-dated periodical, and ambiguously, stereotypically ‘African’ enough to warrant more attention on Swift and her lover. It would be easy to make the argument that indeed, she is the star and this is her music video. But what must be recognised is the fact that the spot-light is on a truly horrifying image: Swift’s Africa features white people, complicit in acting the role of colonial settlers under the facade of the creation of a film.
Watch The Video:
Is @taylorswift13 not aware of the legacy of colonialism in Africa or….???????? Know your history, sweetheart. #WildestDreamsVEVO
— Sydney Murray (@sydmurray) September 1, 2015
The romanticism of this history is a clumsy, heavy-handed act which calls to attention an out-dated racial hierarchy and is scarily reminiscent of colonial attitudes: ‘Africa’ can be groomed to fit an image the white person deems acceptable, can be plundered for its beauty whilst the locals remain invisible, and can become the mythical image of exoticism anyone fed on racist stereotypes sees it as.
The video casts a hazy, rose-tinted glow to the white imperialist presence in the African continent, romanticising it so that Swift does achieve that old Hollywood ’50s colonialist film vibe she’s looking for
It is truly as Binyavanga Wainaina writes about in his Granta Magazine essay, “How to Write About Africa:”
“Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.”
Swift is not a stranger to the romantic, the evocative, and the unparticular. In fact, these qualities seem to be a staple of her song-writing style, and yet, within the context of the ‘Wildest Dreams’ video, these are not qualities which can be dismissed as simply indicative of her personality.
The video casts a hazy, rose-tinted glow to the white imperialist presence in the African continent, romanticising it so that Swift does achieve that old Hollywood ’50s colonialist film vibe she’s looking for: ‘Wildest Dreams’ can easily be recognised as an example of Western media providing a propagandistic image of the exotic frontier playground, sitting comfortably alongside John Huston’s The African Queen and Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa in these efforts. It is an achieved goal Swift has every reason to not be proud of.
The video is deceptively portrayed as simply detailing a complicated love-affair. As Zak Cheney-Rice concisely explained for Mic:
“It is remarkable that the insidious nature of the African colonial fantasy is so seamlessly glossed over. This matters. When a pop culture product reaches as many people as a Taylor Swift video does, the images it presents have implications beyond their immediate purview.”
Cheney-Rice has every reason to be wary of Swift’s creative products in light of her influence as one of the world’s biggest female popstars, and especially so when said creative products are as disastrously constructed as ‘Wildest Dreams’.
When it comes to influence, it is a by-product of fame which must be handled with responsibility.
It is exactly this which is lacking in this music video, and while director Joseph Kahn may be comfortable to shirk this one must recognise the importance of contentious, important historical landmarks, like the African continent having to suffer under European colonialism, being treated with more respect and awareness and less lazy nonchalance.
Ultimately, it is the fact that these attitudes surfaced so casually in our modern age omitting the truth of Africa’s history and the Black African presence, whether intentionally or not, in the place of romantic fantasy which deserves to be called to attention.
In this case, Swift’s love-story stopped short of occurring between her protagonists and began to cast back to a part of history which needs no affection. It is this which is truly distressing about ‘Wildest Dreams.’
Cover Photo Credit: GabboT/Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Could This New Dark Matter Theory Change Everything We Know About The Origin Of Humanity?
TORONTO – Dark matter inspires many strange theories, but until now few have involved giant lizards and the origins of humanity. If physicist Lisa Randall’s theory is correct, however, there is a clear link between dark matter, the great unknown majority of universal stuff and the extinction of the dinosaurs, which cleared the path for the… Read More
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Does The Center Of No Man’s Sky Actually Hold The Secret To Life After Death?
One could easily argue that No Man’s Sky was both the most hyped and most disappointing game of 2016, if not ever.
A nearly infinite universe was revealed to be nothing more than a series of expansive but lifeless copy and paste jobs of pre-made assets.
What many found to be the game’s largest let down was what players found at the center of the universe.
Originally rumored to hold a secret to life, understanding, or just a bunch of in-game currency, what players found was essentially a reset button.
But what if the ending to No Man’s Sky showed us what happens when we die?
According to Biocentrism, a theory created by scientist Robert Lanza, Life and Biology create the universe and not the other way around.
The theory argues that our consciousness creates the world around us, meaning space and time aren’t actually things, but are tools of our “animal understanding”.
Along with this is the belief in multiple worlds, where our choices have split one universe into different outcomes.
Read More: Can This Video Game Change Your Ideology?
Basically, your choice to read this article occurred in one universe while an alternate universe exists where you chose to scroll past.
The final part of Biocentrism suggests that our souls are essentially immortal.
Your soul can exist outside and beyond your physical body much like a hermit crab can exist outside of its current shell.
The controversial orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR) theory connects to Biocentrism and supports many of the near-death and out of body experiences humans have reported having throughout history.
Some scientists argue that there are simpler explanations for these visions and experiences.
According to inquisitr.com, “Skeptics have long attributed near death experiences to physical phenomena such as the brain being deprive of oxygen, not the human soul or any interaction with God or the afterlife.”
But former skeptics like Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who was stuck in a coma for 7 days says his near-death experience revealed a consciousness after death.
In an article for Newsweek, Alexander said his profound experience during the coma gave him “a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.”
“It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.”
The “Orch OR” theory could prove scientific evidence of our consciousness being “mere computations conducted within the neural networks in the human brain” while concurrently proving the long held belief of a separate mind, body and spirit in many religions.
So what does this mean for the ending of the game everyone loves to hate?
If your consciousness can’t die, but migrate as the Biocentrism suggests, the transfer and reset of your game once you reach the center of the universe in No Man’s Sky might be a realistic explanation of what happens when we die.
That blinding light and relocation to another universe with a clean slatemay truly be a glimpse into life after death.
That, or it could have just been a cheap way to insert replayability into the game.
Maybe in another universe, I also happened to put the $60 I spent on No Man’s Sky toward something I’d get more enjoyment from.
If you’re interested in learning more about the theory of Biocentrism, you can check out the book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman on Amazon. You’ll also find No Man’s sky regularly discounted if you ever feel like seeing what all the fuss is about.
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Photo Credits: Blake Patterson/ Flickr
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