A Sense of Doubt blog post #1348 - Maya, Matangi, MIA

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1348 - Maya, Matangi, MIA

So, I went to see this documentary featuring the artist M.I.A. on Saturday with my wife.

We both loved it.

Wikipedia calls her a "rapper," which seems very reductive of her actual art.

From the Vulture article linked below:
"The big revelation of the documentary titled MAYA / MATANGI / MIA, which hit U.S. theaters last weekend, is how it vindicates the singer at its heart. At The Guardian, Laura Snapes draws a connection between Christine Blasey Ford and Maya Arulpragasam — nom de guerre, M.I.A. — two women who some have treated as delusional attention seekers, but who may very well be telling their truth, a truth whose complexity the public doesn’t yet have the language or strength to make sense of. In the case of Arulpragasam, a documentary was needed to build a portrait that was already accessible, for anyone looking, via evidence scattered around the internet."


BELIEVING WOMEN AND THE GAS LIGHTING OF M.I.A.
http://www.vulture.com/2018/10/maya-matangi-mia-documentary-review.html

From the Atlantic article linked below:

M.I.A. wants to talk foreign policy. I called up the 43-year-old pop star Maya Arulpragasam last Friday to talk about Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., Stephen Loveridge’s fascinating documentary about her life. But she immediately brought up the latest news about her birth nation, Sri Lanka, which her family of ethnic Tamils fled amid civil war when she was 10. “I am in New York City, down the road from the UN building, where they just decided that Sri Lanka is giving up on holding anybody accountable for war crimes,” she said when I asked where she was talking to me from. “The [Sri Lankan] president just told everyone to fuck off, really.”

For anyone who’s watched Loveridge’s documentary, Arulpragasam’s interest in the Sri Lankan leader Maithripala Sirisena’s speech at the United Nationswon’t come as a surprise. The film in part spotlights how she tried to leverage her celebrity status in the 2000s to advocate for international intervention on behalf of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, whose decades-long rebellion was extinguished in bloody fashion in 2009. Arulpragasam’s musical career—which she has said ended with her 2016 album, AIM—was marked by a series of scandals (remember when she flipped the middle finger at the Super Bowl?). But for all the attention she kicked up, and for all the frenetic brilliance of her songs, most bystanders remain hazy on her animating causes—a fact she partly attributes to the West’s willful ignorance of the wider world.

MIA's CRITIQUE OF WOKENESS
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/10/mia-maya-matangi-documentary-interview/571750/

From the VICE article linked below:


“The reason it’s called ‘MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A.’ is because they’re the three names she’s had in her journey,” says Loveridge, who met M.I.A. while they were both at art school, at Central Saint Martins. “It’s about being all of those things simultaneously. The film has a non-linear structure because I wanted to show how the little girl from Sri Lanka is still the woman on stage at the Grammys with Kanye and Jay-Z.” The reason this was important, he explains, is because people and their lives are messy and complex and full of contradictions. “It’s important to stand up for real nuance,” he adds. “You can’t brand people as a single, solitary authentic identity. Lots of people don’t have that privilege in their lives – they’re a mixed up, cut-n-paste, patchwork, bit of this, bit of that – and I think those people are fantastic.”

"Acknowledging the personas that exist in everybody is important – we’re full of light and shade, of old and new selves. But it’s particularly pertinent when speaking about the immigrant experience because those who are seen as ‘other’ often end up being tugged in various directions. “For Maya, she’s experienced life in Sri Lanka, and she’s learnt how to be a pop star,” Loveridge says. “Some people view that as diminishing her authenticity. Like, 'you’re not a proper Tamil anymore because you didn’t live there for 20 years', 'you can’t speak about those things because you live in Beverly Hills and eat truffle fries', 'you’re not really a punk because what do you know about the Clash?' All the way through. But there’s a risk in pushing displaced people and immigrants down a gap where they get lost as being ‘non people’ and lose their identity because they’re not 100 percent anything. But Maya’s not ashamed of her identity; she’s proud of her it.”


The Long-Awaited M.I.A. Doc is Messy and Intimate, Just Like Life
https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/j54gap/matangi-maya-mia-steve-loveridge-interview

HERE'S my original post from when I bought tickets back in August. LONG anticipation for this event.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-sense-of-doubt-blog-post-1288-matangi.html

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1288 - MATANGI MAYA M.I.A. Documentary

We're going!

That's it today. Grading robot.

You should go, too.

Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam (aka M.I.A.) is one of the music world’s most controversial and politically outspoken artists, having created an exceptional body of work for the last 15 years. Of Sri Lankan descent but born and raised in the UK, she has been a forceful advocate for the rights of the oppressed worldwide, but has also drawn ire for her pointed statements about the nature of power and using one’s voice to speak out on various forms of oppression. Loveridge’s loving, charmingly disheveled documentary charts Maya’s rise to stardom culled largely from self-shot video of the rapper cultivating her art (and identity), providing an illuminating glimpse into the birth of a global pop icon from her humble beginnings. “The cogent, thoughtful organization of this material . . . both makes the film revealing and allows for the impression that it’s more foundational than it is conclusive. Loveridge fully understands that even the trifurcated title of Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. may not be entirely equipped at capturing the extent of this artist’s many-faceted identity.”—Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine. “As a raw document of Arulpragasam’s life it’s a treasure trove of intimate insights, and fashions an image of Arulpragasam as an artist who documents things as they happen, rather than shooting material that slots neatly into a shiny, predetermined PR narrative.”—Simran Hans, Sight & Sound.










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SOME VIDEOS

This video was featured in the movie. It was originally banned from You Tube.

M.I.A. made a great point about it. Either she released or someone else released and posted the ACTUAL footage of the execution of children (adults? my memory fails me here) on The Internet and no one called from it to be taken down, banned, censored. But when M.I.A. puts it all in a fictional context and shows execution with some fake blood made from ketchup, suddenly it's the most upsetting thing EVER.

M.I.A. is great at calling people out on their hypocrisy and BULLSHIT.

Fuck you, people. Fuck you, NFL.







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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1810.30 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1214 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.