In the same week American rapper Nicki Minaj released Anaconda, a music video dedicated to celebrating “the butt”, US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released a video, Shake It Off, accidentally dedicated to highlighting white privilege.
The public shaming of Swift for perpetuating racial stereotypes and accusations of cultural appropriation started to circulate within hours of the video’s release last Monday.
While I don’t want to label Swift’s heavy-handed, badly choreographed and fairly lacklustre film clip as purposefully racist, it is without a doubt racially charged.
Let us start with the facts.
The clip shows Swift expeditiously trying on various dancer’s hats. With each new hat she plays the role of a jazz performer, a ballerina, a hip-hop dancer, a cheerleader, a rapper and so on. The only thing that links Swift in each of these performances is her consistent shortcomings.
Presumably we are meant to identify and sympathise with Swift’s awkward and goofy girl-next-door façade. And to some extent we do. She is a fool, but ultimately we are humbled by her tomfoolery.
At first glance the cast of dancers is very multicultural. Swift is backed up by an wide variety of people as she blunders her way around the set. However, the inclusive casting choice soon reveals itself to be less innocuous.
All the ten ballerinas are white. Of the six hip-hop dancers, the majority are of colour. We must ask ourselves, if all the dance tropes are apparently multicultural and diverse in their casting, why are the ballerinas and the hip-hop dancers the only two groups that are so explicitly racially marked? What is Swift trying to say here?
We are introduced to the ballerinas in a Swan Lake-themed line of thin, blonde women, who appear to be the personification of poise and elegance. The hip-hop dancers first appear on screen with a close-up shot of a big, black twerking booty.
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This is really reaching. How about: they picked the best dancers who auditioned for each genre? The end. I know people who cast for ads, videos etc, and sometimes creating the ethnic diversity you are aiming for is not possible because that's not who auditions. According to the director of the clip, they had to cast in a very short period of time and finding enough dancers of a high level of talent on such short notice at all was difficult. Although there are wonderful ballet dancers of every colour, did any of them show up to audition? Were they available for filming? Unless you have the answers to those questions, calling out the ballerinas is a tad unfair. If a fantastic dancer of another race came forward and said a lesser white dancer was cast in this video instead of them, I'd be the first to jump all over this is racist; but it hasn't happened. There is not evidence that this was the case. In fact I think one of them at least is hispanic? I truly think they cast this whole video in a colour-blind fashion; just choosing the best dancers of each genre who auditioned and were available.
The dancers were treated the same way, with respect and with a Lucille Ball-type Taylor in their midst. The video as a whole is racially diverse and populated with amazing dancers.
I was in awe of the dancers in this video, particularly some of the breakdancers that just do the most incredible things with their bodies. I'm glad they picked these incredibly talented dancers so that I could watch them, and didn't worry that maybe more of these guys were black or of colour than white, just to even it out.
Also, this happily ignores the fact that not all of the twerking women are black! You can plainly see that there are white, and possibly hispanic women there too. I read elsewhere that this doesn't matter, because the front twerker is a black woman so therefore it is still racist. You know what would be racist? Not casting the best dancer in a genre because she's black and you don't want to offend people. Not putting the best dancer at the front because she's black. That's racist. Perhaps crawling through their legs could be seen as objectifying women's bodies at a stretch; but it is not racial because they are of mixed bloody race. Besides, it's pretty clear that the intent is that she's trying to figure out the mechanics of what they are doing, not to sexualise them. So this is just looking for insult wherever you can find it.
What annoys me more the most, I think, is that anyone really believes that Taylor is solely responsible for the video. It's the concept of the Director, and Taylor is merely the star. Like all music videos, there would have been a casting call for people who are professional dancers and they would have auditioned for a certain part, and won that part based on their ability to dance. For those that believe this clip is racist, has it ever occurred to you that out of all the twerkers in the video, the 3 white women represented may have been the only white women who showed up for the audition? Or that any other white women that did show up simply couldn't twerk? And it was very clear the not all the ballerinas were "white".
The Director did make a comment after being asked about the accusations of racism (interestinly enough, one person who constantly called the video racist on twitter eventually admitted to having never seen the video).
'Mark Romaneck, the director of the video, defended his work stating: "We
simply choose styles of dance that we thought would be popular and
amusing, and cast the best dancers that were presented to us without
much regard to race or ethnicity." He also stated: "If you look at it
carefully, it's a massively inclusive piece, it's very, very innocently
and positively intentioned. And — let's remember — it's a satirical
piece. It's playing with a whole range of music video tropes and cliches
and stereotypes.'