Ananthan points us to a new music video for M.I.A.’s ‘Bucky Done Gun.’ The mix she uses, the official one from Arular, is so spare that it can hardly sustain a video, leaving me squirming during the long gaps when nothing’s happening musically. The version from Piracy Funds Terrorism is much higher energy.

The video is beautifully filmed, though, black and white recolored in pastels, much higher production values than her early efforts. It’s strange seeing gritty radical chic, itself poseur, turn glossy like a high end photography mag. The video recolors a pair of loudspeakers to match the Palestinian flag, and M.I.A.’s checkered tights evoke the PLO kaffiyeh. Its firebomb-throwing young men are porn for the ultra-left, but the images are carefully sanitized: you see colored Holi smoke streaming from bottles, but you don’t see any actual explosions or maimings. In another bid for hip-hop authenticity, the label surrounds Maya with a swarm of backup dancers who are black.

In M.I.A.’s attitude you can already see the shift from awkward ingénue to sexually confident diva. The video opens with M.I.A. in a boxer’s hood, mike dangling from the ceiling. A clear homage to ‘Mama Said Knock You Out,’ it’s the very definition of aggression. The gaze from beneath the bangs covering half her face is no longer diffident, it’s brassy, painted and unblinkingly heavy-lidded. Her previous videos have been much more playful; this one’s simultaneously more serious and more trashy, with Maya and her main backup dancer pole-writhing against a chain-link fence.

I should cheer for a performer coming into her own, but it feels like a Miltonian loss of innocence. Yeah, I’m already nostalgic for M.I.A. circa 2004 ;)

Watch the video.

Update: Here are the lyrics:

They’re comin through the window
They’re comin through the door
They’re bustin down the big wall
And sounding the horn

What you want
The bucky done gun
What you want
The fire done burn
Get crackin, get get crackin

Time to spit new shit
I’m rocking on this new bit
I’m hot now you’ll see
I’ll fight you just to get peace

Heavy weight wrestler
Fight me in your comforter
Let you be superior
I’m filthy with the fury ya

I’ll hard drive your bit
I’m battered by your sumo grip
Lucky I like feeling shit
My stamina can take it

Gymnastics super fit
Muscles on the gun clip
Bite, teeth, nose bleed
Tied up in the scarf piece

Can I get control
Do you like me vulnerable
I’m armed and I’m equal
More fun for the people

Physical, brute force
Steel, iron, you’re the boss
Yeah, you’re so do-able
Grind me down sugar salt