THIS IS IRAQ
July 5, 2018 2:17 PM   Subscribe

THIS IS IRAQ by I-NZ. Reconceptualization of Childish Gambino's This is America.

"I-NZ is a New Zealand rap MC based in Dubai.
Born in Scotland to Iraqi parents, his cultural diversity shines throughout his music"
posted by Corduroy (11 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here's hoping this gets as many views as the Childish Gambino version. This is searing, and a reminder that W was an astonishingly terrible president who only looks better compared to what we've got now.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:33 PM on July 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Buwaib
posted by Fupped Duck at 4:29 PM on July 5, 2018


Turn on CC.
posted by loquacious at 4:38 PM on July 5, 2018 [6 favorites]


closing poem is by Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, "the River and the Death" (trans Jamil Azeez Mohammad)

Buwaib, Oh Buwaib,
Bells of a lighthouse lost at the bottom of the sea,
Water is in the pots, and the sunset in the trees,
The pots ooze bells of rain,
Their crystal melts away in wailing.

Buwaib, Oh Buwaib!
Sympathy for you, Buwaib darkens in my blood,
Sad like rain, O my river,
I wish I could run in the darkness,
Tightening my both fists to carry,
In each finger, a year of yearning,
As if I were carrying votive offerings,
Of wheat and roses.
I wish I could approach from the hills beds,
To glance the moon,
Wading between your banks,
Planting shadows and filling the baskets,
With water, fish and roses.
I wish I could wade you, to follow the moon,
And hear the pebbles rattle in the bottom,
The rattling of thousands of sparrows on the trees.
Are you a wood of tears or a river?
And will the fish sleep at dawn?
And will these stars stay waiting,
To feed with silk thousands of needles?
And you, Buwaib, how I wish I could sink into you,
To pick up oyster shells to build a house out of them,
To enlighten with it the verdancy of water and trees,
Of what the stars and the moon ooze,
To reach the sea in you with the ebb,
For death is a strange world,
That enchants the young,
And its hidden door was with you, Buwaib.

Buwaib, O Buwaib.
Twenty years have gone, every year is like ages,
And today, when darkness overcast,
To stay up sleepless in bed,
And to delicate the conscience up to the daylight,
Like a tree with delicate branches, birds and fruits.
I feel the blood, the tears as the rain,
Ooze by the sad world.
Bells of the dead are shaking in my veins,
To darken sympathy in my blood,
Sympathy for a bullet to cut open the depths of my heart,
With its constrictive ice,
To burn up the bones like the hell.
I wish I could run to support the strugglers,
To tighten my both fists and slap the fate.
I wish I could drown in my blood to the bottom,
To bear the burden with human beings,
To infuse life. My death is then triumph.
posted by standardasparagus at 4:52 PM on July 5, 2018 [10 favorites]


Buwaib is a small stream in Jaykūr, Iraq—the home of al-Sayyab—and is a distributary of the Euphrates. Notably, it was the site of an early 7C battle, on the twelfth day of Ramadan, between the Rashidun Caliphate and Sasanian Persians, ultimately portending the latter's demise.
A youthful warrior of the Taghlab tribe rushed forward with great courage and intrepidity, and penetrating the Persian ranks slew Mihran with his sword. The youth proclaimed:

"I am a young men of the Taghlab tribe;

"I have killed Mihran, the Persian Chief."

The death of Mihran turned the tide of the battle. The Persians lost nerve, and fled in disorder. Muthanna at once made a dash for the bridge and captured it. That prevented the Persians from recrossing the river. The Muslims made mincemeat of the Persians. According to the annals, no battle had ever left so many corpses for its sanguinary souvenir as were strewn on the battle-field of Buwaib. For years thereafter the travellers in the region witnessed the grim spectacle of heaps of bones scattered in all directions.
posted by standardasparagus at 5:11 PM on July 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Holy SHIT this is good.
posted by lauranesson at 1:05 AM on July 6, 2018


I love this as much as the Nigerian version. I want one for so many more countries.
posted by knownassociate at 6:51 AM on July 6, 2018


I came in all cynical, expecting a cringy version. Blown away. Pulls no punches.
posted by greenhornet at 11:29 AM on July 6, 2018


In the original, CG machineguns a gospel choir, turns to the camera and says 'This is America', and goes right back to the song and dance. It's shocking, but then challenges that shock, because that happens in America every few days and the party just goes on. You don't do anything about it.

That video got 400m views, which is important, and I hope roughly correlates to how many Americans should have seen it. It's for Americans.

This is also for Americans, but it's not shocking enough. They need to show before/after pictures of Mosul. They need to show what a car-bomb that kills 100 people and levels a city block really looks like. It needs to have that shock value for the art to work.

You can watch PBS and something on the scale of the Boston bombing happened in Iraq today, now let's talk about the weather. It takes a lot to shock an American, especially about Iraq, which they DGAF about.

I do like this, it's well made and makes important points, but it does pull punches.
posted by adept256 at 4:44 PM on July 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


I agree with your sentiment, adept256, especially for Americans. But I’d argue this is also made for a Middle Eastern or diaspora Middle Eastern communities, as so far I’ve only seen it shared by Arab friends and organizations (granted it still has very few views). I’d be curious to know how the decisions were made of what to depict (finances, audiences, etc.).

I also wonder if there would be a dangerous combination of dehumanization and desensitization if this video were to show more violence in a more shocking manner. What would make it more shocking than PBS showing a blown up street than switching to weather? I think the first bump between American soldiers and ISIS is possibly more powerful.
posted by Corduroy at 4:03 AM on July 7, 2018


Just maybe kiwi-ness has rubbed off on I-NZ, we tend to understatement, although how anyone could see the final scene play out while a cleaner mops a pool of blood away and not find it mundanely horrifying I don't know. I don't think punches are being pulled in this work.

This is also for the rest of the world and we are rapidly turning against America (even where we don't want to) but the US has become a topic too embarrassing to mention. An effect of this kind of production may be to increase this level of needing to look away; even to shun. Which will be the first nation to expel their US ambassador?
posted by unearthed at 5:44 AM on July 7, 2018


« Older Baby genius, look how you've grown. Where do you...   |   But the topic here was wolves, and that weaponized... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments