Taylor Swift recently revealed her new music video for "Wildest Dreams," during the MTV VMAs pre-show on Sunday. After its release, the video was heavily criticized for "depicting white colonialism," according to Billboard.
Directed by Joseph Kahn, the video was filmed in Africa but was criticized for its largely white cast that was featured throughout the video.
In response to the negativity the video got, Kahn provided a statement by Swift's publicist, according to Entertainment Weekly. In the statement, he responded to the allegations and said that the video was "not about colonialism, but about a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950." He compared the "Wildest Dreams" music video to films like "Out of Africa" and "The English Patient."
"'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," Kahn said, according to People. "There are black Africans in the video in a number of shots, but I rarely cut to crew faces outside of the director as the vast majority of screentime is Taylor and Scott."
Kahn explained that there were people of color in the video and he pointed out the fact that key creative minds that worked on the project were of color. "I am Asian American, the producer Jil Hardin is an African American woman, and the editor Chancler Haynes is an African American man. We cast and edited this video. We collectively decided it would have been historically inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would have been accused of rewriting history," he finished.
Check out the music video for "Wildest Dreams" below!
