REVIEW
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.
Stars: 4.0
Starring Mathangi (Maya) Arulpragasam
Directed by: Steve Loveridge
Rated 14A for coarse language, violence, and disturbing content
Runtime: 101 minutes
Playing Monday at Metro Cinema as part of CJSR volunteer campus radio’s annual FunDrive fundraiser, which runs Friday through Nov. 3. Visit www.CJSR.com for more.
She’s the daughter of the Tamil Resistance. A child of Sri Lankan immigrants to London. An outcast. A fashion designer. A visual artist. A filmmaker. A rapper. An activist. She could’ve been any slum kid but she turned herself into a superstar.
If you haven’t heard of M.I.A. then you need to start paying attention. The movie Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. is a great place to start.
Maybe you heard her hit song Paper Planes playing in a good handful of popular movies or on hit radio, but you don’t know the singer’s real story. It’s a story that deserves to be told and shared and appreciated far beyond what any music aficionado could offer. It’s a human story about an underdog who stays true to herself and devotes her creative spirit to self-expression and the expression of stories that come out of hardship. In short, she is a revolutionary, artistic and otherwise.
Born Mathangi Arulpragasam in London, England, she and her family soon moved to Sri Lanka where her father founded the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), a political Tamil group affiliated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They spent the next 11 years immersed in bedlam and chaos amidst that country’s civil war, leading them into hiding. You think that your life is hard because you have two exams on Tuesday? Start thinking about running and hiding from gunfire for your entire childhood. She still managed to get to school, where she developed her art skills, despite armed soldiers regularly sticking their rifles through holes in the windows and shooting randomly, while students dived under tables.
Now you know why Paper Planes has the gunshot sound effect playing during the chorus. Stop complaining and do your homework, kids.
They moved to India, still in abject poverty, before resettling back in England where they were housed as refugees in what she referred to as an “incredibly racist” housing complex. From there, she somehow became the vibrant personality that she is today. She is vocal, and not just on her albums that are infused with electro, reggae, rhythm and blues, alternative rock, hip hop, grime, rap ballads and Asian folk influences.
She speaks out freely and publicly about political issues and, in one interview with The New York Times, she reported how it was more important for her to keep her ability to speak her mind, at the expense of her popularity.
Originally started seven years ago, Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. follows the multi-talented artist over more than two decades with highlight moments showing her perspectives on some of the controversies that have followed her, like when she gave the middle finger salute during her halftime show performance at the Super Bowl. It was artistic expression. It’s not like the NFL actually paid her for performing, after all.
This is an eye-opening documentary/biography of an artist who has done so much despite starting with so very little. There’s music, of course, and it’s nothing but a heart-pumping, multinational, multi-genre, punk anthem to electro beat fantasies. If that’s all you take away from this, well that’s a start. Your CD library’s street cred just jumped a few notches. But the lessons that people can learn from following the rise of Mathangi to the artist known as M.I.A. will surely broaden your horizons immeasurably also. She’s cool, smart, and unlike any other international pop star you’ve ever heard or seen or listened to. Don't trust me. Go see it for yourself.
