Within a day of its splashy and widely discussed debut on the Web, the video for M.I.A.’s song “Born Free” was in some instances removed from YouTube and in some instances labeled with an age restriction. The video, made for the first single of M.I.A.’s coming album and directed by Romain Gavras, the son of Costa-Gavras, depicts an unspecified military force, with some members wearing American flags on their uniforms, rounding up red-headed men from an apartment complex and taking them to a desert to be tortured and executed.
When it was released on Monday, “Born Free” quickly drew excited responses from around the Web: MTV wrote that it “depicts the kind of things that most nations — including the U.S., which is portrayed as the aggressor in the clip — often pretend don’t happen” and “it does so in an unflinchingly, unapologetically real way,” and Spinner.com wrote: “If you’re into cinematic displays of violence that make overt political statements about the way state-run armed forces control people, then this one’s for you.”
The video can still be viewed on M.I.A.’s official Web site, miauk.com. Representatives for M.I.A. and her label, XL Recordings, did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
In its community guidelines, YouTube advises that videos can be taken down from the site for violations like excessive violence, and they can be flagged by users if they believe videos are in violation of these guidelines. YouTube declined to say if any versions of the M.I.A. video were taken down due to its violent content.
