But "Guns, armored vehicles, and fleeing civilians" can be both empty images and incendiary in exactly the same way Che Guevara or Red Army t-shirts can, or swastikas, or the idiot slogan that from time to time appeared on blackboards in my high school: “The south will rise again!” Similarly, M.I.A. can namecheck the PLO, the Tigers, and bombs to make you blow. But this duality doesn’t make any of these things more profound or less crass.
Whether or not M.I.A. is using them as mere decoration, people still have the right to ask if there’s something more for these images to say. Journalists have been having a joyous field day with M.I.A.'s exotic background and rock fans are stupid. But if we the listeners have to confront the contradictions in M.I.A.'s music that goes triple for M.I.A. herself, given that those contradictions originate in a war whose participants have contributed, however inadvertently, to the ongoing misery that rocks Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and now London.
A grenade is a grenade, a tank is a tank, and terrorism isn't much more fun in a club track then it is on stage at a white separatist convention. M.I.A. is using political violence for her own artistic ends, and it's impossible to tell what - or how unserious - those ends are. In a way, political violence is the "momma joke" of the music world. Christgau wants to give her a pass for that; my gut won't let me.
I'm not here to indict M.I.A. for anything; Christgau is right that she doesn't come out and endorse the Tamil Tigers at any point. I also agree that it’s vanishingly unlikely that she has any designs on using her music as a PR campaign for such a cause. Moreover, I really like "Galang" a lot. But to use terrorism and revolutionary insurgency in the service of pop music in this day and age is either a pop-culture triumph of the highest order or a tasteless and ill-considered act of exploitation, and I can't for the life of me figure out which one.
Article comments
1 - Lonely Canuck
Just saying, I got a chance to interview her - you can listen to it here
2 - Michelle
I think there's an area that a lot of people are missing with M.I.A. and that is: humor. I feel like a lot of what she says is tongue-in-cheek. If you look at it that way, it takes on a whole new meaning. Maybe that's just my take, but when you take a song like Sunshowers and think about how U.R.A.Q.T. is on the same record, you have to wonder how "serious" this is all supposed to be. I feel like there may be an element of spoofing gangsta rap. Something to think about.
3 - Antonia
Interesting article. I'm glad someone had the guts to put this out there. It's what I've felt all along about the content of her music. Yea, it sounds good... "catchy"... but really, the content is vile. It's worse than vile. And you're right... fans are stupid. And that's why, despite the world scene and how WRONG her music is especially in light of it... she still succeeds. It's disgusting.
4 - Antonia
I just noticed that article was forever ago.
LoL... ah well... point is it all still applies... doesn't it.
5 - Christopher Rose
Acton isn't a council estate, it is a borough of London.