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Taylor Swift’s video for her latest single “Wildest Dreams” is being slammed by some critics for portraying white colonialism, and for using Africa as a backdrop for a love story of white people. But as the video’s director pointed out, it can’t be racist since black people also worked in its production.
“This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950. I rarely cut to crew faces outside of the director as the vast majority of screen time is Taylor and Scott [Eastwood],” the director told NPR.
He says that he used classic movies as a visual reference point.
“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.”
And insists that people should focus on the fact that the makers of the video are people of color.
“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,” he added.
“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.”
The “Shake It Off” singer hasn’t responded to the accusations yet, so it seems like she’s letting the work speak for itself.
Agencies/Canadajournal
Defining a product as not racist because black people are involved in its production?
Hmmmmmm?
I guess American Slavery wasn’t racist.
Black people were “involved” in the production of cotton.