September 10, 2010 Explore the collective identities presented in the MIA music video ‘Born Free’
The moist poignant collective identity present in M.I.A’S video are ginger males. This collective identity has been used as a tool to inflict or intensify the message in the song ‘Born free’. The message being sent is that everyone is born free so why should people be criticised or made fun of due to either their race, religion, or in this case hair colour? This message is extremely prominent in the video due to it being so closely related to the holocaust and ergo why so much speculation has been made on whether it should be aired on public music viewing channels such as Youtube.
Another collective identity which is an important part to the narrative is the depiction of the military forces. The most unusual thing about the men is that they are wearing gas marks. There could be several reasons for this, one reason could be that they are trying to represent the guards of the holocaust, another more deeper explanation could be that they are trying to hide their faces from the shame of having to round up the ginger boys and then kill them. Another reason could be that the men are seen as being more menacing in a mask as their true identity cannot be revealed. As one can see the true intent of the armed forces wearing a mask is very ambiguous.
Every character in the music video is male, a part from one woman at the beginning of the video, although even here she is represented as weak and vulnerable as she is naked. One reason for the video having predominately male characters is that males are seen to be the stronger gender this represents them as more powerful and stronger than women.
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