Can you name one brown artist -- and I mean a non black and non white artist or actor? That's alot of people in the world today but no one can be found in media to really represent that range. I'll give you a minute to think about it...

Chances are you just had a real hard time. Most of you won't be able to because the binary of black and white is such a dominant control mechanism that when an artist like Maya appears the intitial spectacle of "Error! Life is not black and white!" ends with a whimpering cancellation -- and return to the black-white dynamic. You are just as guilty as I am, and she was, for it.

This documentary is Maya's own chronological year by year log of her own rise from UK streets, as documentarian for Elastica to the fated Superbowl show where she is crucified and exiled from America. However, it's much more than that when you look at it as more complicated than the documentary even get's into. I would say M.I.A's lineage is more Cesar Chavez, Frida Kahlo, Adam Yauch, and Willie Guthrie than Rosa Parks, Malcolm X or the Stonewall Riots. If you understand what I mean then you know. She's complicated. What she represents is complex to most people who live in a very myopic view of culture. I don't blame them or you -- since we are bombarded with binary cultural leaders all day. The little voices hardly get a spoonful of soup unless they make a ruckus.

The documentary asks if she is less a social justice symbol or more a force in time. Is she her own narrative of herself as this reluctant savior for the Tamil people? Or is she a multiplicity of issues, the result of things being arranged in a certain way at the time? I'm not sure a white artist with activist roots could ever be stuck in the same corner as an artist who originates from a place undergoing active genocide can be. Unless of course said white artist made the genocide their issue without being there (Cue Kony 2012.) M.I.A came close to being that because she sort of was "in the mix" of the genocide, or at least tried to be by placing herself there. For M.I.A fans you know. This idea of going back to the homeland to represent the homelands people is a rough slog (read "Seasons of Migrations to the North"), its a heavy load to carry and it almost never resolves to any success for the artist or activist. It historically resolves to sleeping with the dominant race and getting your jollies on despite your people's interests. That's what "Seasons of Migrations" was about -- an African dude sets out to France to achieve success and spends his time having trysts with the white bourgeoisie as his hometown floods to extinction -- and it bares a striking similarity with Maya's tale.

The larger point of celebrities trying to save the downtrodden and failing though still stands. Even the white folks that do this are crucified; the Rachel Corrie incident in Gaza for example (look it up), Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys' speech at the VMAs (he denounced Islamophobia, and was the lone voice to do so), Brando sending an indigenous woman to collect his Oscar (Brando was protesting Big Oil raiding indigenous land.) These folks were either unalived or tossed off as nutsos for taking these positions. And the issues they were taking a stand on continue to this day unphased by their grandstanding! Why is this a pattern with celebrities? Rather, why do they just say something and then stop at the rest of the work required? ANSWER: Because it's not enough to just take a stand. Community activism is an artform that celebrities seem profoundly unskilled at.

[spoiler]I personally believe she was robbed by the NFL. 16 million dollars, c'mon! That's forcing her into slavery to pay back. It wasn't really that bad and she didn't need to be crucified or made into an example. Didn't Dre and Eminem do the same? Didn't Janet Jackson show full nudity? Placed under a microscope I wonder if the NFL has fined anyone else that ever did something risque who performed at a half-time show.[/spoiler] I wonder if that one aspect of the film presents the moral story of M.I.A's rise and fall in America. Or, does it only serves to show the shelf life of non black/non white American artists is around 5 years. Cue Aziz Ansari -- the other jack of all trades, master of none time has forgotten. Combined they were both cancelled; one by the liberal feminist left (Aziz) and the other by the conservative populist right (M.I.A), that's the bigger story I saw. She's got a canary in a coalmine story less about her people and her own personal narrative, but about how "others" in general hit a wall that only generational wealth can solve.

And yes, I realize the word hole I just put myself in since her marrying into Seagrams fortune is what probably kept her alive. And even for a potential revival. I bet she knows exactly how to solve the Sri Lankan issue by now. She commanded fleets of ships for her videos and armies of arabs for "Bad Girls", I bet this is not the last time we hear from M.I.A. I just hope on round 2 she reads "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky and does the other 14 steps required to create community change. ;)