A Brief Encounter with M.I.A.

I spoke to Maya Arulpragasam on the telephone one afternoon for reasons unrelated to this story. She was in a recording studio in London, on her way out. Our conversation progressed as she hopped into a car en route to an undisclosed location. Once the business at hand was dealt with, as a fan and an opportunist, I decided to ask her if I could continue the interview. She seemed indifferent and distracted by her fellow passengers, so I took that as a yes. Earlier on, I was perusing her MySpace page and came across a blog post in which M.I.A. was hawking a new movie that she felt we needed to see, even though she had not seen it herself (she ordered it). I also followed up on EW.com's recent interview with her, in which she was asked about her newfound success following the use of her song "Paper Planes" in the Pineapple Express trailer. Here's what the newly pregnant M.I.A. had to say.

I was on your MySpace page today, and I read your entry on the movie My Daughter The Terrorist. Can you elaborate on why you endorsed this movie?
The movie follows two Sri Lankan elite female soldiers in the Tamil Tigers as they train for terrorist missions. The reason why I respect that filmmaker (Beate Arnestad) is she choose the most dangerous place to go to in the world. It’s like a similar film that I tried to make. It was just impossible; there is no way you’re coming out alive. The fact that she got that far and filmed something like that, it’s kind of amazing. Reading all the press that surrounds it, that’s what I have been doing this morning. If you read all the links, its got such crazy propaganda around it. Like everyone is trying to shut it down, and they tried to screen the movie in America, and automatically everyone is like, “Oh my god, this is glorifying terrorism.” But it isn’t.

You want to be able to see something. You have to hear both sides of the story and to be that brave, and to be able to go there and show that, it takes so much. And she’s a random Norwegian filmmaker. It’s got nothing to do with being a big name, you know what I mean? I think that kind of bravery doesn’t exist in films today. I have always wondered what it must be like, whether it’s anyone—like back in the day, you had filmmakers like Mary Ellen Mark, who would go in and live in the streets. It’s not like she was glorifying anything. She was a documentary filmmaker, and she was showing what life was really like for some people. Everyone that was photographed in the 80s, driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, with big hair and shoulder pads, you know there has to be another photo that shows you a 14-year-old kid living in the streets, because their mom is a heroin addict. I think that in New York and stuff, we are used to that image now; its been part of the alternative culture, and then filmmakers like Larry Clark highlight these things and bring them into the mainstream.

Speaking of mainstream, do you think the late discovery of “Paper Planes” has moved you more into the mainstream?
I think there has definitely been a shift in how people perceive it. Like somebody was explaining that to me yesterday; it’s like nothing has really changed in me. I’m still doing the same thing, and I still make music how I make music, but then when you hear that song—someone was telling me that a year ago, when they heard the song, they were like “That’s a cool song.” Now when they hear it, they think, “Oh my god it’s amazing,” because it’s had its stamp of success thing that goes with it, because so many other people know about it. It hit Billboard or whatever, and everyone’s like, “The song is really good now” because success makes a song sound even better. It’s the same exact song. But once it has success, the song sounds better for some reason. In terms of feeling like I’ve crossed into the mainstream, I don’t think I have.

Photo: Nymag.com