Taylor Swift's newly-released "Wildest Dreams" music video has landed her in hot water. A number of critics have called out the 25-year-old pop superstar for including only white cast members despite the video mainly being shot in Africa.
Directed by Joseph Kahn who previously worked with her on the "Blank Space" visuals, the "Wildest Dreams" clip centers on Swift and Scott Eastwood as 1940s movie stars who fall in and out of love with each other while filming a movie in an African desert.
Some of Africa's signature animals including lions, zebras, giraffes and cheetahs are seen multiple times in the video, but not too many black actors appear in it. Swift, who's dressed as a colonial-era woman in the clip, is additionally accused of romanticizing colonialism.
"Taylor Swift is dressed as a colonial-era woman on African soil. With just a few exceptions, the cast in the video - the actors playing her boyfriend and a movie director and his staff - all appear to be white," NPR's Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassafa Arinaitwe commented in a post.
"We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was okay to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa," they continued.
"Swift's music is entertaining for many," they added. "She should absolutely be able to use any location as a backdrop. But she packages our continent as the backdrop for her romantic songs devoid of any African person or storyline, and she sets the video in a time when the people depicted by Swift and her co-stars killed, dehumanized and traumatized millions of Africans. That is beyond problematic."
Rutabingwa and Arinaitwe weren't the first ones to criticize Swift's video for the same reasons. Saying the clip channeled "white colonialism," Huffington Post's Lauren Duca explained, "Instead of the cultural appropriation that has become almost status quo in today's pop music, Swift has opted for the bolder option of actually just embodying the political exploitation of a region and its people."
The Daily Dot's Nico Lang wrote, "The video wants to have its old-school Hollywood romance but ends up eating some old-school Hollywood racism, too." He added, "Just because you represent the past or pay respect to it doesn't mean you need to recreate its worst aspects."
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