Throughout 2013 the US tried to use the popstar Rihanna as political pawn in an effort to dominate pretty much every global political issue. This was doomed to failure from the start but I stayed with the tour in an effort to protect Rihanna. My hope was that once the tour was over Rihanna could take a year off to put all the politics behind her an return to simply being a popstar. Sadly Rihanna's people seem to have had other ideas and if anything are trying to get her more entangled in politics.
Rihanna's latest single "American Oxygen" has already been brought to a wide audience in the US have been used in the TV coverage of the recent college basketball competition known as "March Madness." The song attempts to contrast the idealised American dream that bring migrants flocking to the US with the disenchantment felt by may poor - often black - Americans. In short it is a campaign effort intended to champion US President Obama's twin causes of immigration reform and the anti-police "Black Lives Matter" protests.
Last night my curiosity finally got the better of me and I watched the video for American Oxygen on YouTube. It very much tries to drive home the message of the song by contrasting file footage of irregular migrants trying to smuggle themselves into the US from Central and South America with footage of the civil rights protests of the 1960's including the famous 1965 Selma march and the more recent Black Lives Matter protests. The sequence early on showing presumably European refugees in silhouette seems to be a deliberate nod to Israel of the Nazi holocaust. During the recent anniversary of the Selma march which has recently been labelled "Bloody Sunday" I went on something of a three day rant about how the police repression of the Selma protesters was far less then the repression of protesters at the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Washington state that have become know as "The Battle in Seattle." As a result the video also included file footage of the Seattle protests.
This reminded me to the 2001 Rage Against the Machine (RATM) video "Sleep Now in the Fire" which is an overtly political song and very much of the anti-WTO protest era. Rather then relying on file footage in order to make the video RATM staged an illegal concert/protest which succeeded in shutting down Wall Street and the US Stock Exchange and very nearly landed the band in jail. Following the 9/11/(01) terror attacks RATM were blacklisted by every major US TV and radio network which proves politics can be a very risky business for popstars.
Although the guy who wrote it claims that American Oxygen was inspired by the Bruce Springsteen song "Born in the USA" it actually seems heavily influenced by the Guns and Roses (GnR) song "Coma." GnR are a band that became world famous almost overnight and suddenly discovered that they hated being that famous. As a result the spent the next four years trying to get their record company to release them from their contract. Coma was written during this period and is very much about the bands desire to end their career. It uses as a metaphor being on life support in hospital where you just want to slip away and die but people are constantly prodding, probing and monitoring you in an effort to force you to stay alive. If you were going though a similar experience in the US you would probably be given American oxygen as part of your treatment.
Having not see the video for Coma in the best part of 15 years it came as a big surprise to me that there's a sequence in it in which a man is drowning at sea and has to be rescued by a US Coastguard helicopter. In itself this was probably a reference to a wave of migrants who were trying to enter the US by sea during the same time. However with the migrant drownings in the Mediterranean being big news at the moment and the US refusing to help with a problem it largely created this struck me as life turning full circle rather like Boetheius' ever spinning big wheel.
Of course when you watch videos on YouTube it automatically suggests other videos that you might also want to watch. As a result I kind of got a bit stuck and that "I'll just finish this beer" turned into four or five more.
14:55 on 22/4/15 (UK date).
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