Galang (song) - Music Video

Music Video

"...The principle (sic) idea behind M.I.A.'s artwork is to have pretty heavy/political ideas, but to present them in a poppy candy-coated wrapper. So someone might buy her painting because it is pretty to the eye, and not necessarily consider that it is a rebellious image that she is presenting. However, after they've had it for a while, they might start to think - why do I have a pink tank on my wall? … I think that is a very successful video in that we have true images of revolution playing on MTV. However, because there's lots of pretty colors and a pretty girl dancing, no one blinks an eye. Hopefully we have succeeded in subconsciously starting the revolution."

- Director Ruben Fleischer talking to PopMatters about the video for "Galang".

The accompanying video for "Galang", featuring multiple M.I.A.s amid a backdrop of her graffiti artwork animated, was directed by Ruben Fleischer and art directed by M.I.A. M.I.A. told Negar Azimi of Bidoun she had collaborated with Steve Loveridge to spray paint her original artwork for the video, who worked in a car park while it rained. Fleischer animated her artwork to provide a backdrop for M.I.A.'s floppy, energetic, endearing dance stylings. Bright colors pop, a tiger streaks in the background, and rainbow-colored Tamil script adorns the stencils. M.I.A. sings and dances across the screen through the verses and chroruses, before the camera pans out to multiple M.I.A.s during the song's coda.

The musician decided to wear her own designs on the video, and collaborated with designer Carri Mundane on a tracksuit for the shoot. "Galang" received some airplay on MTV2's Subterranean, and was also shown when she appeared as a guest on the show on 29 May 2005. Ranjani Gopalarathinam of Coolhunting notes that M.I.A.’s personal style "might be a little harder to imitate but believe me I will try – the b-girl vacations in the tropics, but won’t ever forsake her kicks for a pair of thongs (cuz she’s gotta dance)", concluding "When you see the video you feel familiar with the visuals, but that’s just because you WISH."

The visual artwork in the video, as Jason Jenkins of The Japan Times notes, shares the dichotomy present between M.I.A.'s music and lyrics; tanks, grenades and burning palm trees figure prominently in her work, but are presented in the video in bright, kaleidoscopic colors using stencils and Day-Glo spray paint. Rob Wheaton, writing in PopMatters noted that M.I.A.'s approach was an artistic risk, given the "superficial, ephermeral" nature of her chosen media - grafitti stencil art and popular music. He felt that her style was the opposite of radical artists like Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino, who followed Franz Fanon in calling for an art that documented resistance while breaking down the barriers between spectator and artist, stating that "M.I.A.'s art and music, by contrast, are all spectacle. The two-dimensional stencils and the catchy hooks can only subvert the audience's role after their immediate appeal has worn off, and they lack the breadth to contain a full alternative program." However, he argued, this made sense to him, given that "the realm of the image is what M.I.A. is most determined to contest" including media role models promoted on MTV and the conformity of mainstream popular culture. Critics from Slant noted that against a backdrop of graffitied third-world signifiers—tigers, cell phones, palm trees, tanks, bombs—that pulsated along to the song's beats, M.I.A. "simply, and coyly," performs a silly little-girl dance, setting up what would become her multimedia M.O. for years to come.