Paper Planes - Controversy

Controversy

A writer for AFP based in Colombo stated that M.I.A.'s music was not played on Sri Lankan radio or television – which, like music retailers and night clubs there, chose not to stock or play her records due to political pressure from the Sri Lankan government as the Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka dragged on. Instead, fans of the artist on the island relied on certain social media websites on the internet to access her work. The success of "Paper Planes" paralleling M.I.A.'s condemnation of government and army atrocities as amounting to "systematic genocide" and ethnic cleansing resulted in death threats being made against her. Touré, writing in The Daily Beast noted that this was in keeping with the governments' censorship and regulation of news flowing out of the island, which, along with government restrictions to the northeastern theatre of the war in late 2008 meant "the world had heard little" of the atrocities inflicted by the state against Tamils. An American Sinhalese rapper named DeLon circulated a viral YouTube video in which he rapped over "Paper Planes" and accused M.I.A. of "supporting terrorism" by using images of the tiger and discussing violence in her lyrics, showing graphic images of violence purportedly linked to the LTTE rebel group. After some media ran a story on this, M.I.A responded that her music is the voice of a civilian refugee and that she was not willing to discuss anything with someone looking for self-promotion. Colombo based writer Thomas Fuller of the New York Times wrote an article about M.I.A.'s statements against the Vanni onslaught, stating that her music's ambiguity and her criticism of the government's conduct had "not endeared her to the island's Sinhalese majority". Zach Baron of the Village Voice accused the newspaper of using "chintzy, ad-hominem allegations" on M.I.A.'s work in the piece, imploring the paper to use its "vaunted" access instead to inquire as to why the government would not let aid through to the Vanni. M.I.A. said of the situation in Sri Lanka in 2010 "Every single Tamil person who's alive today, who's seen how the world does nothing, has to find a way to exist that isn't harboring bitterness and hate and revenge." Novelist Gary Shteyngart, writing in GQ, notes that "to her Sinhalese detractors, her music is precisely that form of revenge."

The "Paper Planes" music video was censored by MTV in December 2007, who had also banned the video for M.I.A.'s single "Sunshowers". In this version, M.I.A.'s vocals were doubled, the gun sounds replaced with popping sounds, and the word "weed" replaced with the word "seed". The producers of Pineapple Express asked for the word to be similarly changed before use, a request M.I.A. found "ridiculous, cause the whole movie's about weed." On December 16, 2007, following some fan disapproval of the leaked MTV version, M.I.A. stated in a MySpace entry that MTV's decision to change the sound disappointed and angered her, adding that MTV had "sabotaged" a music video made more safe and mainstream than her regular videos. The song was similarly censored during her live performance on the Late Show with David Letterman to her visible surprise, an action she had not agreed to. The chorus effects during the sound check of her Late Show performance were different from what was played live during the taping. At her concert at the Austin City Limits festival a few days after the show, she spoke more of the incident, thanking David Letterman onstage "for letting her into the American mainstream." A writer for New York magazine felt the issue of MTV censoring "Paper Planes" was a non-controversy as the edited clip had been removed from MTV following fan-pressure and replaced, noting "they've been since 1997, according to Wikipedia. What does surprise us is that MTV ever considered showing the video at all. We had no idea they still aired music videos, much less ones by talented artists like M.I.A. If anything, it likely airs at odd hours when nobody's watching." Tom Breihan of The Village Voice also noted this to be part of a general trend by networks like MTV and BET and radio towards rap songs such as those by 50 Cent where any references to drugs, sex and violence were removed and replaced, concluding that this was a double standard approach to rap artists' work compared to songs by Green Day and My Chemical Romance. Commenting that "Paper Planes" is a "song that deserves to start a few arguments, and it should go out into the wider world with its argument-starting potential left intact", Breihan noted that although the uncensored version would not inspire rioting in the streets, more listeners opted to download music as mainstream "cultural outlets in which music makes itself heard are increasingly afraid of offending anyone, ever, for any reason".