Little Boots pop music video for 'New in town' deals horribly with the serious issue of poverty
While in San Francisco, a beautiful city with plenty to do in what is an urban playground to those with an income, I saw many homeless people on
Market Street. It was very sad. I saw this right before we went further along to the Saks Fifth Avenue and Iphone stores.
What a contrast it was - seeing a very large number of visibly poor people and then seeing the Apple store packed with people buying the new 3GS.
Sure we have poverty in Toronto and plenty of panhandlers, but in California I noticed nobody really begs for change. However, maybe since people may have farther distances to go, shopping carts seemed to be more common.
As usual popular culture and music videos out there fail to amaze me in their deftness and insensitivity when it comes to the real economic crises of our time.
I recently got a copy of Little Boots latest album, 'Hands' and it features a track called "New in town" as seen below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUs9YzY7t-8&hl=en&fs=1&]
According to the Boots
youtube site: "we made a video for the new single 'New In Town' in down town LA coz I wrote the song one of the first times I went to LA on my own so its kind of about being a stranger in a strange place ...
www.littlebootsmusic.co.uk"
This whole video reeks of recession-style capitalization. It is exploitative of the real condition of poverty. Did they use actors to play 'homeless'? Or did they exploit real street residents? The tone of the video makes poverty look like a laughable condition, rather than as a political problem which needs people to take action on, to change, within our society.
While we are desensitized regularly in urban places to the poverty and suffering around us, I'm not quite sure what this video accomplishes. Other than the song's clearest message: "sex is free" Now everyone go out and have sex! = ?
Having just returned from California; a state in serious debt with a real poverty crisis, and a former movie-man Schwarzenegger as governor, one has to wonder why Little Boots makes light of this sad situation.
According to the Governor's site, in March he had
a plan to relocate people in a tent city in Sacramento into Cal Expo. But, in another
NPR story, there was reportedly some resistance from residents. Meanwhile homeless advocates pointed out that there were at least 1200 homeless people and only 200 beds being provided.
Little Boots' poorly done music video does nothing but exacerbate a false sense of what poverty is. I guess this is old news... but I really wish pop music videos could have better standards than this.