It wasn’t in Taylor Swift’s wildest dreams to have her new music video criticized.
Swift debuted her video titled “Wildest Dreams” at the Video Music Awards Aug. 30, and the response from critics wasn’t as positive as expected.
The premise of the video is that Swift falls in love with a co-star while they are shooting a film, only to later realize that he is married. The video was filmed in Africa and por-trayed a love like that between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who fell in love on the set of “Cleopatra,” according to director Joseph Kahn.
Many critics, say Swift purposefully shot the video without the sight of one African per-son and claim the video has racist undertones “for portraying a romance in white coloni-al Africa.”
“There are black Africans in the video…but I rarely cut to crew faces out…as the vast majority of screen time is Taylor and Scott [Eastwood],” Kahn said.
The crew who produced it was also quite diverse. Kahn is Asian-American. Jil Hardin, the producer, is a black woman. The editor, Chancler Haynes, is a black man.
All cast and crew members agree that the intention was not racially-based. Instead, it was to portray a tragic love story, and I think they did just that.
I believe the critics are just trying to find something to dislike about Swift’s new video. I believe that the race issue isn’t something anyone would automatically think of when watching this video. It’s an overreaction so the press can have something to talk about.
Taylor Swift continues to capture her audience, and when the haters hate, she just shakes it off.
