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Posted By Charles Homans
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - 1:38 PM
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In the much-discussed cover story of this weekend's New York Times Magazine, Lynn Hirschberg profiles M.I.A., née Maya Arulpragasam, the British-by-way-of-Sri-Lanka musician whose third album comes out later this summer. It's an interesting piece (even if its subject doesn't think so), not least because it's the first celebrity profile I've read that begins with a thorough parsing of Sri Lankan dissident politics. The subject comes up because a frequent touchstone in M.I.A.'s music is her father's resume: He was as a founder of the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS), a militant group with ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization that helped lay the groundwork for the modern Tamil statehood movement before being superseded by the more violent Tamil Tigers.
Although her father never actually had anything to do with the Tigers, M.I.A. championed the organization's cause (albeit sort of vaguely) throughout its guerrilla war with government forces in northern Sri Lanka, a war with few good guys. (By happenstance, M.I.A.'s own ascent to popularity over the course of her first two records happened mostly between the breakdown of peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers in 2006 and the rebels' defeat in 2009.) Her support is a matter of considerable annoyance to activists concerned with bringing about some sort of lasting peace on the island. "It's very unfair when you condemn one side of this conflict," Ahilan Kadirgamar of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum tells Hirschberg. "The Tigers were killing people, and the government was killing people. It was a brutal war, and M.I.A. had a role in putting the Tigers on the map. She doesn't seem to know the complexity of what these groups do."
Hirschberg mines this vein unsparingly -- you know the knives are out when a writer pulls the old take-a-radical-artist-to-a-fancy-restaurant trick:
Unity holds no allure for Maya - she thrives on conflict, real or imagined. "I kind of want to be an outsider," she said, eating a truffle-flavored French fry. "I don't want to make the same music, sing about the same stuff, talk about the same things. If that makes me a terrorist, then I'm a terrorist."
A whole genre of art is, by association, coming in for a drubbing here: the venerable agitprop tradition in which M.I.A. has positioned herself. In music, the legacy runs back through Public Enemy, who championed Louis Farrakhan, and the Clash, who called their classic 1980 album Sandinista!; elsewhere, you've got Warhol's Mao paintings, of course, and pretty much everything Jean Luc Godard has ever said. It's different from the standard political peregrinations of artists and celebrities in that the art is inextricable from the politics, and from their audaciousness -- the Clash record would have sold somewhat worse if it had been called Social Democrat!
This is the line in the sand between the postmodern chilliness of M.I.A.'s radical politics and, say, the heartfelt socialism of Woody Guthrie -- the aesthetic of conflict, rather than any particular policy ambition, is the point. To Hirschberg, it suggests an unflattering comparison:
Like a trained politician, [M.I.A.] stays on message. It's hard to know if she believes everything she says or if she knows that a loud noise will always attract a crowd.
I think this is a more damning indictment of politics than it is of M.I.A. -- whose music is, all things considered, pretty great, if not quite up to the precedents of London Calling or It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Stitching an aesthetic out of politics is at the end of the day pretty harmless; assembling a politics out of aesthetics, not so much.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Apparently, the writer of the NYT article has been exposed for her dishonesty. This is the problem with cheap, tasteless "writers" who forget what their job is about. And the fact this was written in NYT is surprising. I'd like to know though, how much Lynn Hirschberg was paid by the Sri Lankan government, as part of their 30 some million dollar propaganda campaign in the US, for M.I.A's character assasination. After all, the Sri Lankan government buys journalists and writers to make anyone who critices their state terrorism and oppression of their minority to look like terrorists.
It's quite certain that the Sri Lankan government needn't expend resources to make Tamil militants appear to be terrorists. The militants do an excellent job of that all by themselves. Just as the Tamils would hardly need a conspiratorial cash flow to make the Sril Lankan majority appear brutal and bloodthirsty. Hirschberg deserves credit for shining a light through the many holes of M.I.A.'s radical chic. Taking one or another side between dueling nationalisms, especially between Tamil and Sinhala, each with enormous propensity for cruel and vicious tactics, is nonsense. In these cases, neither the rote left-wing sympathy for the minority nor the right-wing sympathy for established institutions will suffice. The core of the problem is nationalism itself. Blood and soil nationalisms, as well as linguistic ones are not tenable politically. Neither side gets a pass, and M.I.A. is indeed just another in a long succession of musicians who discover that a radical pose sells records. Sometimes that radicalism is ideologically sound, other times it isn't.
The author above makes the strong point that more often ideological soundness and aesthetic appeal are at odds. Witness the entire genre of black metal. Unquestionably some of the best, most powerful, innovative music to have been made anywhere in the last 2 decades. And yet, it often carries hate banners suited for Stormfront. That hardly makes Burzum and Peste Noire records any less musically compelling. Black metal also is big business. Satan, fascism, thinking it's cool one of your friends killed a gay man--it's all the stuff of tabloids and b-horror. Just like M.I.A. is souped up 'V for Vendetta' mainstream radicalism (it wasn't Paul Wolfowitz Matt Damon was quoting in 'Good Will Hunting'). This stuff is too easy--so easy as to be transparent. Nobody needs to be on the government take to see through M.I.A.'s shit.
The most outstanding omission from her article was the part where she failed to note that M.I.A. could barely slag Gaga for lifting from ABBA if M.I.A.'s entire last single was one long Suicide sample. Synthesizing melody is something Gaga can do that she can't. And sex will always be more revolutionary than bombs when it comes to rock and roll. So Gaga wins that battle. In the battle for awful, morally reprehensible nutbag politics with fantastic music, Burzum's 'Belus' (formerly titled 'The White God') wins. M.I.A. is toast on both sides of the equation.
J_STRAWN: "It's quite certain that the Sri Lankan government needn't expend resources to make Tamil militants appear to be terrorists. The militants do an excellent job of that all by themselves."
Really? You're "certain" of that. That explains why the Sri Lankan consulates and high commissions in countries like Canada and the U.S are constantly threatening, intimidating journalists and Tamil academics who speak out aginst human rights violations and the oppression of minority in Sri Lanka. Journalists and academics must be militants and terrorists. That explains why the Sri Lankan government is spending tens of millions of dollars for their propaganda campaign when millions of displaced people are destitute and dying. And of course that's why journalists and activists in Sri Lanka end up murdered; because in your parlance, the Sri Lankan government needn't "expend resources".
"Just as the Tamils would hardly need a conspiratorial cash flow to make the Sril Lankan majority appear brutal and bloodthirsty."
Well, the fact is the Sri Lankan Sinhalese majority, didn't hesitate to endorse a government whose mandate was clear from the outset, to slaughter tens of thousands of Tamils. The Sri Lankan majority showed the green light for the slaughter. When at the end of the slaughter they came home dripping with Tamil blood, the Sri Lankan majority gave them a "king" status and title and have put them on a pedestal. All that speak for itself. Tamils neither need to nor do they have the time and energy to make the Sri Lankan majority "appear" brutal and bloodthirsty. They're too busy picking up the blown up bodies of their babies and mothers and fathers by the Sri Lankan majority.
"Hirschberg deserves credit for shining a light through the many holes of M.I.A.'s radical chic."
Well, she certainly has your congratulations, no doubt.
As for your arguments, though flawed, regarding nationalism, well, they're your opinion and you're entitled to it.
Well, look Avocado - an authority no less than the US Department of State has determined the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization. If you want to quibble with their methodology then have at it. But it's a silly argument to suggest that the Tigers' - long-known as innovators of suicide bombing - are anything less. Pointing out that the Sri Lankan government has blood on its hands does nothing to absolve the Tigers and that's the fundamental point of the argument; advocating for one side over the other is nothing more than picking a dog in the fight. For better or worse, MIA paints the scenario as some kind of genocide where the lines between right and wrong are brightly drawn. At best she's naive about the politics here. At worst she's stoking a conflict which will only end when both sides are called on the carpet for atrocities.
Well, look proletariat, an authority no less than the State Department of U.S has studied the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka whose rights have been suppressed and as a group seriously marginalised by the majority Sinhalese in 1988 and beyond. And look, an authority no less than the State Department of U.S. has, from recent months, countless evidence beyond doubt: deliberate arial bombardment of women and children in their homes, hospitals, churches, and whatever, executions and every possible atrocitiy imaginable, murdering tens upon tens of thousands of Tamil women and children, destroying entire communities, families, their nationhood, and ethnicity and identity. Anyone can play their geopoltical games and brand anyone as terrorist, and spend millions to tell the world "not a single drop of blood was spilt" and "not a single civilian was killed", but, don't expect Tamils not point finger at the Sri Lanka government, because they're the ones who've been murdered. And because you can't murder their families and use the propaganda machine on them at the same time. If you will insist on painting a rosy picture of the Sri Lankan government, well then proceed, but not without facing the resentment of those who've been made victims. If you will insist on regurgitating the callous Sri Lankan government and deny the injustice done to the minority in that country, then I will no longer listen to what you have to say. So, perhaps you should find some innoccent, unfamiliar FP readers to infuse biased arguments with. You can find plenty.
Reading comprehension not your strong suit?
"If you will insist on painting a rosy picture of the Sri Lankan government..." and "If you will insist on regurgitating the callous Sri Lankan government and deny the injustice done to the minority in that country..."
If that's your characterization of what's been written here, I'd suggest you lost any semblence of objectivity on this topic a long time ago. Beyond that you apparently don't understand that sympathy for Tamils doesn't require support for the Tigers (any more than support for Palestinians requires support for Hamas). You may, in fact, support the Tigers and their cause. That doesn't make them any less a terrorist organization. Carry on.
It's easy for writers who've never experienced the deeds of the Tamil Tigers to see MIA as just another musician who claims to have a political ideology.
What if, instead of the Tamil Tigers,she glorified the cause of Al Qaeda, Hitler or the KKK. Imagine if her videos contained glorified images of planes flying into the WTC towers, the murder of "undesirables" at Auschwitz, or innocent men been lynched by organized mobs.
Will she still be seen as just another musician trying to jump on a political cause to make a name for herself? Will it still be okay to support the messages she puts out with her songs?
Did Hirschberg disort the facts
In Defense of M.I.A
http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.cfm?content=175225
Hirschberg has a history (or if I aptly put herstory) of putting her versions when she interviews celebrities.
Her Human right activist source Mr. Kadirgamar himself was the nephew of an ex-sri lankan foreign minister, I heard.
why is that whenever some oppressed minority of a distant third world talks about its self determination rights, few people try to evoke the terrorists and racists like Al Qaeda and KKK? Is it just to scar the people who do not have no clue of what happen in that third world country? sri lanka is basically a terrorist state that has no less in executing atrocities to sudan and other regimes.
International Crisis Group, Amnesty International, CPRJ and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights not long ago demanded independent inquiry ont what happened last year in that island.
New York Times for a strange reason only it -and may be the sri lankan government- knows gave sri lanka the best tourist spot in the world few months ago. MIA trashed this report. Since that day, NYT seems to be after her. Ironically, on the same day she & Hirschberg feud, sri lankan foreign minister visited Washington, distributed the portfolio "of visit and invest" sri lanka with NTY Tourism piece as a leaf in the official document. What a coincidence!
It is easy to fill this comment box with links, but it is not of netiquette. Just searching "sri lanka" / "human rights" / "journalists" would provide links that have nothing to do with MIA, but global right watching agencies.
I don't get why stories about the Tamil Tigers always get spammed with wildly inaccurate pro-Tiger comments. I know they kidnap the relatives of ex-pats to use for extortion, but are they really extorting you all into shilling on an internet forum? I knew they were desperate, but that's beyond the pale.
Sri Lanka tamed the Tamil Tigers for good
Kudos to Mahinda Pakse for cleaning up the country and ridding itself of the murderous thugs called the Tamil Rats...ooops Tigers.
What if she defended a war criminal like Ariel Sharon? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? W? The entire CW industry -- save a few brave souls like the the Dixie Chicks -- defends and glorifies state terrorism. And what about US bands that use the Stars and Bars of the Confederate traitors? Gonna ban Lynard Skinard?
First thing we have to do is ban flip-flopping conservative moral relativism.
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