Taylor Swift's 'Wildest Dreams' Director Defends Video Amid Controversy

Taylor Swift's 'Wildest Dreams' Director Defends Video Amid Controversy

Taylor Swift‘s “Wildest Dreams” music video director Joseph Kahn has released a statement after many people were upset by the video’s lack of diversity.

If you didn’t see the video, check it out here.

“‘Wildest Dreams’ is a song about a relationship that was doomed, and the music video concept was that they were having a love affair on location away from their normal lives,” Joseph said (via E! News) about the backlash, which comes from an article by NPR titled ‘Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of a Very White Africa,’ among others. “This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950.”

“There are black Africans in the video in a number of shots, but I rarely cut to crew faces outside of the director as the vast majority of screentime is Taylor and Scott. The video is based on classic Hollywood romances like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, as well as classic movies like The African Queen, Out of Africa and The English Patient, to name a few,” Joseph added.

“The reality is not only were there people of color in the video, but the key creatives who worked on this video are people of color. I am Asian American, the producer Jil Hardin is an African American woman, and the editor Chancler Haynes is an African American man. We cast and edited this video. We collectively decided it would have been historically inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would have been accused of rewriting history. This video is set in the past by a crew set in the present and we are all proud of our work,” Joseph said.

Click inside to read the remainder of the statement…

“There have been many music videos depicting Africa. These videos have traditionally not been lessons in African history,. Let’s not forget, Taylor has chosen to donate all of her proceeds from this video to the African Parks Foundation to preserve the endangered animals of the continent and support the economies of local African people.”

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