Video for M.I.A’s ‘Born Free’ Banned From Youtube.

M.I.A’s single ‘Paper Planes’ reached such a high level of commercial success it may have earned itself the brand of mainstream, but people who have been with M.I.A since the days of her debut, Arular will know that this acclaimed and political artist couldn’t be cruising further away from the middle of the road. 

The recent single “Born Free” released on XL records, has made the news for its 9 minute long video companion, which shows a group of armed government thugs scouring a city and rounding up all the ginger-haired boys, who are taken to a dessert and brutally killed for sport. The director Romain Gavras who created the video for Justice’s ‘Stress’, appears to be using the mass murder of ginger haired people as a symbol for racial genocide and war crimes. 

A name which alludes to article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, suggests that the video has a deeply issue-based concept, making any claims of ‘gratuitousness’ seem sweeping and thoughtless. To draw a curtain across such crimes, puts them into the realm of the unspeakable, which is surely harmful and will become a breading ground for protest. 

The video could be a backlash against the success of recent war films which make no attempt to address the USA’s reasons for war, but to paint an emotional portrait of the American soldier and reinforce the view that the Iraqi and Afghan people are a threat, and identify them as  the ultimate enemy. 

So should the video have been banned from youtube? No. Age restriction, fair enough, I mean we do seem to be living in fear of an entire future generation of Venables and hoodys. If such a generation have indeed grown numb to scenes of violent warfare, then surely for that very reason the ban can be described as nothing else but online-censorship. 

The reasoning behind the ban is that youtube prohibit gratitous violence, but in my opinion, the only justification of banning a video which could have essentially been a documentary, is fear of the internet and its increasing power to round up troops of people towards a common purpose. 

Political activists now have more than a placard and a megaphone, the internet has given them the tools to publish controversial material with the world as their audience. Whether this is a step forward or back, is for you to decide.