If you're going to critique the new Taylor Swift music video, you shouldn't start off by saying "haven't watched the taylor swift video and I don't need to watch it"... especially if you're Earl Sweatshirt and the director is Mark Romanek.
The Odd Future rapper took offense to the "twerking" component as another sign of "white girls" hiding their prejudice by perpetuating black stereotypes — a provocative comment that of course went wild.
Thing is, Romanek is an Earl Sweatshirt fan, and saw the comment. And, addressed the "controversy" in an interview with Vulture:
"I'm a fan of his and I think he's a really interesting artist. (I posted a Vine to one of his tracks once.) But he stated clearly that he hadn't seen the video and didn't even intend to watch it. So, respectfully, that sort of invalidates his observations from the get-go. And it's this one uninformed tweet that got reported on and rehashed, which started this whole "controversy." We simply choose styles of dance that we thought would be popular and amusing and cast the best dancers that were presented to us without much regard to race or ethnicity. If you look at it carefully, it's a massively inclusive piece. It's very, very innocently and positively intentioned. And — let's remember — it's a satirical piece. It's playing with a whole range of music-video tropes and clichés and stereotypes."
Not as much drama as most Twitter wars, but maybe that's because he had more than 140 characters to respond.
PS: if you want a good music video directing philosophy, the one Romanek presents in the interview is one I'd recommend:
I kind of pride myself on being able to tailor a bespoke style for just about any artist or genre — whatever's called for, really. In this case, the assignment was to create a purely fun, upbeat pop video. I'd never really done that, so it was a new challenge.
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