You know the liberal media have nothing of value to talk about when they decide to turn on their precious Hollywood allies —for no reason!
Last Sunday, Taylor Swift premiered her new music video “Wildest Dreams” at the VMAs. The surprisingly good video sets 1920’s old Hollywood glam against spectacular African scenery. But according to Jezebel’s highly unsatisfied Madeleine Davies there is a huge problem with the video having “… nary a black person in sight.”
Huffington Post’s Lauren Duca criticized, “…feels a lot like white colonialism.” She went on to write, “[i]nstead of the cultural appropriation that has become almost status quo in today's pop music, Swift has opted for the bolder option of actually just embodying the political exploitation of a region and its people.”
Yes, she did. Because it’s a music video, not a Howard Zinn essay.
Duca even compared featured video star Scott Eastwood to the villains in Pocahontas for sporting high-waisted pants on the pretend set. Davies took a harsher route and labeled Swift and Eastwood’s video characters as “poor lovelorn colonizers.”
The bashing continued from Nico Lang of The Daily Dot who wrote, “for a clip that’s set in Africa — it’s about as white as a Sunday morning farmer’s market.” Lang followed up with “…the video wants to have its old-school Hollywood romance but ends up eating some old-school Hollywood racism, too. And it’s sadly indicative of its star’s own shoddy racial politics.” Whatever they are.
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Matt Carotenuto, associate professor of history and coordinator of African studies, wrote in Salon, “[t]hanks, Ms. Swift, for again proving that African stereotypes are safe atop the pinnacle of American pop culture.”
It’s all so predictable. Fish gotta swim, lefties gotta race-bait.
And if that’s not bad enough, apparently the video’s four-minute plot was just too difficult for some media outlets to comprehend. Duca pinned it as an “ambiguous movie” and admitted, “[w]e had trouble tracking the plot of the pseudo-film within this video.” Given that the song title is “Wildest Dreams,” the video isn’t exactly Hamlet. It’s a “wild” love story that doesn’t work out in the end. Let’s not overthink it, shall we?
Finally, perhaps in a bid to soften the inevitable backlash to all that intentional evil white colonialism Taylor Swift notified viewers at the end of the video that all of its proceeds would be donated to wild animal conservation efforts through the African Parks Foundation of America.
Davies had to get in one last jab at the singer for doing this, “[v]ery kind of you, Taylor, but you know that animals can’t take sides in your feud with Katy Perry.” You would think this act of charity would merit some praise considering just a few weeks ago these same liberals were mourning over the dead lion Cecil.
