This week I was surprised when a friend
of mine told me that they really just didn’t see the credibility in the
controversy surrounding Coldplay’s Hymn for the Weekend music Video starring Beyoncé.
They said that they only saw the video as celebrating Indian culture; it didn’t matter if Indians were offended because the video represented India
in a bright, positive way. They went on to say
that the Indian people should be grateful because Coldplay was helping them “look better”. They also added that because Beyoncé was black, cultural appropriation
didn’t apply to her. This was said as if being black, or Indian, or essentially
any race other than white lumped you into one big pot of otherness.
The article
bellow addresses exactly how the video engages in cultural appropriation. It’s a great resource to help us learn more about
the controversy and how it is offensive. This sentence sums up the article expertly, “India has always
been positioned as a shallow vessel that exists for Westerners to "find
themselves."”
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