Thursday, September 24, 2009

Have You Seen the Newish Justice Music Video?



Take it away, LA Times:

There are plenty of gasp-worthy moments in the French electronica duo Justice's video for "Stress": when one of its becrucifixed teenage bangers, all notably black, Middle Eastern or North African, gropes a woman in a train station; when another smacks a cafe owner in the face with a bottle; when the whole gang whales on a police officer with his own baton. But the most telling moment is its one instance of levity; the gang steals a car and, supremely annoyed by Justice's hit "D.A.N.C.E." on the radio, kicks the dashboard to pieces.

It's a clever, self-deprecating gag, but entirely symptomatic of the spirit of this horrifically compelling video from director Romain Gavras, which debuted two weeks ago to instant controversy on Kanye West's blog. The clip's merits lie solely in the aesthetic power of its allusions and references. In this case, the video gestures at the 2005 riots that swept through the Parisian suburbs and painfully underscored the deep division of race, class and religion in what many outsiders saw as a model society.

The duo admitted in a press release about the clip that "we have neither the intention nor the legitimacy to express ourselves, in any in-depth way, on social issues." If that's truly the case, then Justice has made an irresponsible and intentionally thoughtless video that does nothing to further understanding, empathy or clarity of the issues they gesture at here. That makes "Stress" a powerful but truly failed piece of art. "Opening up debate" is a good start for a piece of art's goals -- it's the height of laziness to call it an end point.



But, as my friend Emma Tupper pointed out, isn't the whole point of the video to make the audience simultaneously attracted to, and repelled by, their own racism and obsession with violence? And if putting audiences through that kind of mental torture is somehow lazy art, what does that say about movies like "A Clockwork Orange"?

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