For those of you who haven’t caught the new Florence and the Machine video: No Light, No Light – let me just say it’s causing quite a stir, as it should. Reviewers of the video have been using the “R” word to describe the disturbing images depicted throughout.
I’ve been a fan of Florence and the Machine for some time. No one can deny that Florence’s vocals stir and haunt you in a very good way so when I watched this video I was really hoping that all the reviews I read were some how inaccurate. As I watched I kept hoping that at the end there would be some redemptive resolve, but alas there was not. I can’t help but feel very disappointed in an artist I’ve admired and I keep asking myself the questions:
“Was this purposeful?
and
“Was Florence trying to tell a bigger story or was she simply ignorant/naive to the story she was telling and how harmful her interpretation of lightness and darkness could be”?
In any case, whether it was an intentional move on her part to tell a particular story or she stumbled upon a thread of racist depictions in order to juxtapose the dimensions of lightness & darkness– goodness & evil the fact is (in either scenario) the story was not told well and ultimately the artist needs to be accountable to being a responsible story teller and to understand the dynamics and nuances of the story she is telling and what larger implications it may have.
If you haven’t seen it. I recommend you check it out on your own. Here’s a recap of some of the imagery:
- Scene one opens to a radiant Florence singing at the top of a building. Her face is illuminating against the back drop of the sky and the contrast of her fiery hair. Her voice is clear and resounds like a bell, but she is clearly troubled.
- The contrasting scene is of a black man in a full face and head covering. His body is writhing on the ground while he is sticking pins into a voodoo doll. The connection here is that it seems that the voodoo doll symbolizes Florence– every time he pokes the doll Florence rises in pain– she is being tortured by what seems to be voodoo/witchcraft.
- The next scene is in a church sanctuary where a choir of white boys sing. At some point Florence begins to fall off the side of the building and she is plunging towards the ground while the choir boys lift their arms towards the sky… Florence crashes through the roof of the church and into the boys’ hands where they save her from the fall and ultimately from the haunting inflictions placed on her from the voodoo witchcraft.
You see the video did tell a story. And whether or not Florence intended to tell this particular story– the video shared the story of our history and the painful truth that historically the church has used Christianity as a justification to elevate one class of people over another based on race, socio-economics, gender, etc.
As we approach MLK day on Monday we remember the painful reality that the church has been a place where divisions around race have been perpetuated, sustained and normalized.
This is why Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr stated that Sunday at 10 am was the most segregated hour in America.
This segregated state comes out of history where Christian mission to evangelize and disciple incorporated a world view that those that were ‘other’ due to skin color were considered savages and uncivilized. These ideas maintained a system where white Christians and the culture at large benefitted from the structure of slavery which became indispensable for survival.
In Divided by Faith by Emerson and Smith they speak to the ideology of savagery by stating:
“Traditionally, white Christians paid little attention to slaves’ souls. The pre-1700 views that black slaves were less than fully human, did not possess souls, and were incapable of learning, as well as simple indifference by white Christians all led to a lack of interest in proselytizing slaves”.
This division around black and white also solidified a belief that white equals good, righteousness and salvation and black is equivalent to evil and bad. Therefore, the black individual is something to fear and the white person(s) is a place of safety and salvation. Florence’s video supported these ideas by depicting her being tortured by this voodoo worshiping black man and the salvation she finds in the church and these white choir boys who rescue her.
The video also paints a scene that contrasts innocence and beauty against evil and darkness. Innocence and beauty seemed to be connected to Florence, while darkness and evil connected to this black man.
My mind couldn’t help but return to an idea that helped perpetuate and sustain a racialized society in slavery and the Jim Crow era where the white woman was epitimozed as innocent and untouchable.
In the Jim Crow era bi-racial relationships were unacceptable especially involving a white woman and a black man. In the event that relationships of this nature occurred the African-American person would find themselves face to face with violence, torture and lynchings, though the same standards did not occur for white men who were involved with African-American women.
This led me to think of the story of Emmett Till, a 14 year old black boy who on a visit to the south allegedly whistled at a white woman at a grocery store. Several hours after the incident Roy Bryant and two other men show up at the door of Till’s uncle’s house and demand to see the boy. They take Emmett from his uncle’s house and over the rest of the night they beat this boy unrecognizable and leave his body in a river.
These are the stories that were re-opened and re-told through the video No light, No light. Perhaps this is the story that Florence meant to tell… I don’t know. Unfortunately, what the video did do was re-glamourize and send a message that such images like these are okay and even normal.
As we move closer to MLK day, I reflect once more on these painful realities and histories and I hope that we all do the labor intensive work of understanding our story so that we can live into a community that values healing, re-imagines diversity in a way that tells every story and reflects the dignity of every human life.
If you have a review on this video please share!
