PC, Gone Flower Mad


daffodil bulbsUgh, I just got back from a weekend-long conference on ‘cultural appropriation’. Everyone in the studio had to attend. And I know it’s pretty important, because we can cause offence if we
film a music video and just steal from another culture to make it more colourful, whatever. That’s been more or less our protocol ever since that band asked us to make them a music video and they pretty much just wanted themselves being filmed around the streets of Albajeria, picking out the parts of the culture that they wanted. Sixty million views, a lot of dislikes.

Now, call me crazy, but I don’t think ‘garden enthusiasts’ count as a culture. We got a list of all the stuff we can’t ever show in a music video ever again, and it included daffodils. Oh, and daffodil bulbs, just to cover all the bases. Sorry, what?

I asked about it and the boss said it was something about them being sacred in some country, somewhere. But not in Australia, which is what’s really getting me right now. There were all these random flowers on the list, most of them completely harmless and nice looking and nobody is going to get offended if we want to film a girl running through a field full of daffodils, seriously. It’s not like I’m trying to overturn the establishment, but I just want the freedom to do what I like when I’m directing without being bound by these stupid rules.

I don’t even have any plans to use most of this stuff. Like, a set of bongos? We can use them in the background but not in the video? See, none of it really makes a sense, especially the part where it mentions tulip bulbs but not actual tulips. See, tulip bulbs were used in an ancient celtic ceremony 700 years ago, so we can’t use them. Uh-huh, and this totally isn’t political correctness gone mad.

-Ernie