Thursday, October 7, 2010

Die Antwoord

Die Antwoord's latest video "Evil Boy". The video is sooo ridiculous, it's awesome.

The background story is:

So, the story behind this video and song (or part of the story -- there's so much going on!) is that this kid was being coerced into a form of ritual circumcision by his community. It's culturally mandatory within his ethnic group, so much so that if you are a young man and you do not participate, you are completely ostracized. It's hardcore.

The thinking, and this is communicated pretty bluntly to the young men, is that if you don't participate, you're gay. You're effeminate. You're not a real man. You never mature from being a boy to being a man.

The kid is hetero. And he struggled with all of this in real life: with what it meant for his personal and cultural identity. And he came to a point where he was like, you know what? Fuck you all. The fact that I won't consent to having my penis sliced with an unsterilized knife, out in the bush, and risk infection or worse-- that doesn't mean "I'm gay," as you say. If that's what being a man is, fuck it, I don't want to be a man. I'll be an "evil boy for life." But, yeah, I am a real man, even if I don't participate in this tradition which I now reject, at the risk of being totally ostracized from my community.

You might have chosen different lyrics, but dude, it's not our story or our culture or our world experience at all.

It's his.

- via boing boing

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