Taylor Swift’s Director Defends ‘Wildest Dreams’ Video from ‘White Colonialism’ Complaints

ashley.rae | September 3, 2015
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The director for Taylor Swift’s new “Wildest Dreams” music video is defending his creation after the music video was criticized for “channeling white colonialism.”

Immediately after the “Wildest Dreams” music video was released on Aug. 30, critics took to the web to vocalize their disapproval:

Swift’s controversial music video is intended to pay homage Hollywood’s Golden Age. The video, which is supposed to be set in the 1950s, shows Swift and her co-star, Scott Eastwood, falling in love set to a backdrop of movie being filmed in Africa.

The major criticism of Swift’s video appears to be that it prominently features Swift, who is white, in Africa.

For example, NPR’s Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassaga Arinaitwe wrote of the video,

“In it, we see two beautiful white people falling in love while surrounded by vast expanses of beautiful African landscapes and beautiful animals — a lion, a giraffe, a zebra.

Taylor Swift is dressed as a colonial-era woman on African soil. With just a few exceptions, the cast in the video — the actors playing her boyfriend and a movie director and his staff — all appear to be white.

We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa.”

The video’s director, Joseph Kahn, initially responded to the outrage by pointing out the producer of “Wildest Dreams” is, in fact, a “(super hot) black woman”:

In a statement to the Daily Mail, Kahn said there “is no political agenda in the video”:

“Wildest Dreams is a song about a relationship that was doomed, and the music video concept was that they were having a love affair on location away from their normal lives. This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950.

There are black Africans in the video in a number of shots, but I rarely cut to crew faces outside of the director as the vast majority of screentime is Taylor and Scott.

The video is based on classic Hollywood romances like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, as well as classic movies like The African Queen, Out of Africa and The English Patient, to name a few.

The reality is not only were there people of color in the video, but the key creatives who worked on this video are people of color. I am Asian American, the producer Jil Hardin is an African American woman, and the editor Chancler Haynes is an African American man.

We cast and edited this video. We collectively decided it would have been historically inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would have been accused of rewriting history. This video is set in the past by a crew set in the present and we are all proud of our work.

There is no political agenda in the video. Our only goal was to tell a tragic love story in classic Hollywood iconography. Furthermore, this video has been singled out, yet there have been many music videos depicting Africa.

'These videos have traditionally not been lessons in African history. Let's not forget, Taylor has chosen to donate all of her proceeds from this video to the African Parks Foundation to preserve the endangered animals of the continent and support the economies of local African people.”

 

 

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