Much Ado About Maya

Mark Arax, author and one of my college professors, once asked our Creative Journalism Class what to do about personal bias in journalism. While some of my classmates responded that a writer should try and overcome their biases, the correct answer ended up being that, as a journalist, the best way to deal with your personal bias on the subject you’re writing about is to reveal them completely, so your audience can take that into account when reading your piece.

I have no particular bias about the musician and artist, M.I.A. or Maya Arulpragasam: I’ve seen her twice in concert, first in the summer of 2007 in a tiny Brooklyn venue and then at Coachella 2009. The first time I saw her perform, she was amazing, the second was less impressive and much louder. That said, I think she’s an important part of pop culture, especially because she is a woman in a male-dominated genre of music; sings, as well as vocalizes her views, about controversial political situations; and is a “pop star” with a unique style who does not fit the blonde, nearly-nude stereotypes of pop stars today. If M.I.A. and Lady GaGa were to fight to the death, I’d side with M.IA. Now let’s talk about Lynne Hirschberg’s bias against M.I.A.

Unfortunately, Hirschberg doesn’t reveal the origins of her personal bias against Maya, but it’s clear from the start of her much discussed New York Times piece, "M.I.A.’s Agitprop Pop", that she doesn’t approve. Lines like, “Unity holds no allure for Maya — she thrives on conflict, real or imagined,” and “It’s hard to know if she believes everything she says or if she knows that a loud noise will always attract a crowd,” seethe disapproval. Maybe she was upset that it took her “over a year” to schedule the interview with Maya, a fact she amicably states in the two recordings of the interview Maya posted on her website.

Posted to point out two of the inaccuracies in Hirschberg’s article—the infamous French fry order and Maya’s quote: "I'm tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.' I'd rather say, ‘Give war a chance.' The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here's your opportunity to help.' And no one did."—the recordings are part of Maya’s campaign to discredit her. In a storm of tweets, she wrote “CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE, ill b taking calls all day bitches ;)" and made public Hirschberg’s phone number. She also released a new song on her website, with the lyrics: “Why the hell would journalists be thick as shit / Cause lies equals power equals politics” and “You're a racist / I wouldn't trust you one bit.” The refrain is a bit less specific, though just as charged: “I’m a singer / Never said anything else / I didn’t lie to you / Thinking of somebody else.”

While I agree with Hirschberg’s assessment of Maya’s posting her phone number—“fairly unethical…infuriating and not surprising—I have to put myself securely on team Maya. I found Hirschberg’s approach to the interview, and her subsequent artistic licensing of Maya’s already controversial quotes, to be unethical. For example, she gets several scathing quotes from Maya’s exboyfriend, Diplo, only to mention on page eight that their personal relationship is contentious and her “boyfriend” [aka fiancé and father of her son, Ikhyd] “really hates” him.

Another example comes from Sri Lanka Democracy Forum’s Ahilan Kadirgamar: “Maya is a talented artist,” Kadirgamar told me, echoing the sentiments of others, “but she only made the situation worse. What happened in Sri Lanka was not a genocide. To not be honest about that or the Tigers does more damage than good. When Maya does a polarizing interview, it doesn’t help the cause of justice.” First, Hirschberg doesn’t tell us what the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum is and why we should listen to one of their representatives: what do other politicians, experts and NGOs have to say? Secondly, she states Kadirgamar is “echoing the sentiments of others” but provides no examples to support that claim.

I found the article to be a critique, not a profile, as exemplified in Hirschberg’s description of Maya’s “Born Free” music video:

“Unlike, say, her performance at the Grammys, which was a perfect fusion of spectacle (a nine-months-pregnant woman rapping in a see-through dress) with content (Maya’s fervor was linked to the music), the video for “Born Free” feels exploitative and hollow. Seemingly designed to be banned on YouTube, which it was instantly, the video is set in Los Angeles where a vague but apparently American militia forcibly search out red-headed men and one particularly beautiful red-headed child. The gingers, as Maya called them, using British slang, are taken to the desert, where they are beaten and killed. The first to die is the child, who is shot in the head. While “Born Free” is heard in the background throughout, the song is lost in the carnage. As a meditation on prejudice and senseless persecution, the video is, at best, politically naïve.”

There is nothing wrong with giving a critique as a journalist, but fess up to it.

As I read and reread Hirschberg’s article, I was moved to look back at my copy of critic Daniel Mendelsohn’s book How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken. In it, he traces the origins of the word “critic”

“…crisis, which in Greek means a separating, a power of distinguishing; a judgment, a means of judging; a trial. For what is a crisis, if not an event that forces us to distinguish between the crucial and the trivial, forces us to reveal our priorities, to apply the most rigorous criteria and judge things?...critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken.”

Perhaps this is where Hirschberg is coming from, a place of concern for the direction pop culture is headed. This was her last article for The Times Magazine—her new gig is editor-at-large of W magazine—and maybe she wanted to leave her mark, twisting Maya’s words ever so slightly to emphasize what she views as the inherent danger of a flippant artist with loudly stated “unsophisticated” political views. My critique of her is that, as a journalist, she is supposed to provide the facts from which we can form our own opinions, not sculpt those opinions for us.

* * *

Music writer Mike Barthel's defense of M.I.A.

Hilarious commentary on Truffle Gate from food critic Robert Sietsema in New York Magazine.