Oh, Taylor.
Twenty million views and counting, Taylor Swift’s latest music video “Wildest Dreams” is rubbing some folks the wrong way.
The music video takes place in Africa during the 1950s and follows the story of Swift and Scott Eastwood. The couple plays classic 50s movie stars and star-crossed lovers.
But where are the black actors?
The video has led critics to claim Swift is whitewashing history and harkening back to the days of white colonialism.
Watch Swift’s music video for “Wildest Dreams” below:
[youtubevid video=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IdneKLhsWOQ” id=”IdneKLhsWOQ” w=”640″ h=”360″]
The Daily Dot’s Nico Lang wrote:
An homage to a love triangle about white colonialists is going to present some, uh, challenges to an artist who just wants to make a three-minute music video to put on her VEVO page – and Taylor Swift found that out the hard way. The video wants to have its old-school Hollywood romance but ends up eating some old-school Hollywood racism, too.
NPR’s Viviane Rutabingwa didn’t hold back her criticism either:
We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa.
The music video’s director, Joseph Kahn, has since come forward to defend the video against critics, saying:
Wildest Dreams is a song about a relationship that was doomed, and the music video concept was that they were having a love affair on location away from their normal lives. This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950.