This time, however, she has gone way too far. Following a social media post accusing former 1D member Zayn Malik of copying her music video for "Yung Rapunxel" in his music video for "Like I Would", Zayn seemingly - but not explicitly - responded with a couple tweets insinuating that he had not done so. While his tweets could not be called kind, they weren't mean either and didn't really contain insults.
But Azealia was NOT happy with his response. The following images display her tweets, because I really don't feel like typing them out (and I'm actually unsure as to whether they're even appropriate for this blog?!):
And there were a few more like it. All of the tweets were heavily homophobic and incredibly racist, which is weird coming from her as she is seemingly against racism; I may be naive but I would have thought homophobia as well (we ARE in 2016 people, but I have to keep reminding myself that some people will never see the right way).
The fact is, there was no call for this kind of discriminatory speech. Zayn didn't even directly respond to her, and while he may have implied that she was making things up because of jealousy (?) he never, ever called her names or said anything derogatory. I haven't listened to either one's songs or seen their respective videos but I highly doubt that music video aesthetics (which I believe are the cause of it all) warranted this kind of rant from Azealia.
Fortunately, there are some amazing people out there who responded to her racist slurs, employing the new hashtag #curryscentedbitch.
The amazing thing about this is that these women took complete ownership of the horrendous slur against (I think?) Indian people - never mind the fact that Zayn is half English and half Pakistani. Instead of lamenting the use of the term, they used it to describe themselves which in turn took away its discriminatory power and made it theirs. It is totally empowering, and slap in the face for Azealia Banks.
Incidentally, Azealia has been taken off the lineup for a festival because of her racist rant - absolutely served her just deserts in the end.
I read about this twitter situation last week on social media and I was shocked by this because it came from Azealia Banks. The things Azealia Banks said on her twitter page towards Zayn and about Indians was straight up racist. But what I didn’t understand was she used elements of Indian culture in one of her music videos, relates to cultural appropriation and here she is saying rude things about Indians. This is just not right and total disrespect towards the culture.
ReplyDeleteAlternative journalism got me thinking now. And I used to try and shimmy my shoulders to her songs.
ReplyDeleteI kind of love that it backfired on her! Like this is so awesome and empowering, that they switched it around like that and made it a positive thing or even just a thing, as opposed to a negative term. So cool! Because the whole situation got so out of hand and Azealia was being explicilty racist, but like unbelievably so??
ReplyDeleteThis was a really interesting blog, cool perspective! Glad you added the bit about the women at the end making it their own, cause i hadn't heard about that!