Earl Sweatshirt Says Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" Video Perpetuates Black Stereotypes [Update: Video's Director Responds]

The debut of Earl Sweatshirt came with a video that certainly offended some people, but yesterday it was Earl who was pointing out the problematic aspects of Taylor Swift's new clip. Unlike Sweatshirt's shock-inducing "EARL" visual, Taylor's "Shake It Off" is seemingly unaware of it's potentially harmful message, which the Odd Future rapper pointed out on Twitter yesterday.

The video finds Swift dancing among twerking women, an approach that has already been criticized as appropriation and exploitation with artists like Miley Cyrus, and Lily Allen. Despite claiming to not have seen the video, Earl dismissed it as "inherently offensive and ultimately harmful", going on to say that "Shake It Off" is "perpetuating black stereotypes to the same demographic of white girls who hide their prejudice by proclaiming their love of the culture."

View Earl's tweets, and watch the video below. Do you agree with his stance?

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[Update: Video's Director Responds]

Earl Sweatshirt's comments have caught the ear of Mark Romanek, the guy who directed the "Shake It Off" video. In a new interview with Vulture, Romaneck responds to Earl thusly:

"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."

Do you think he has a point, or are you still with Earl on this one?

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