No Doubt pulls hot First Nations-themed "Looking Hot"

by Mike Usinger on Nov 5, 2012 at 3:45 pm

Is it just us in the Straight’s music department, or has political correctness gone so far that we can no longer enjoy the simple things in life. Like, for example, the sight of smoking-hot MILF Gwen Stefani strutting around like she just escaped from the set of Lap Dances With Wolves. (And, before you get all enraged, where we come from, MILF stands for Mature Intelligent Likeable Frontwoman, as opposed to Mom I’d Like to Fuck).

To no doubt great expense, No Doubt decided to go with an old west, cowboys-and-Indians theme for “Looking Hot”, the new single off its comeback album Push and Shove. The big-budget clip features Stefani and band bassist Tony Kanal duded out in traditional Native American garb, while drummer Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young embrace their inner Gunsmoke fans. In addition to gunplay on frontier-town streets, the video also features a fire-dancing scene and a sequence set in a teepee.

While the members of the Association of Godfearing Old-Fashioned Texas Cowboys have yet to voice their displeasure at how they are portrayed, No Doubt has evidently angered some in the Native American community. As a result, the band has pulled the clip from such place as YouTube, as well as issuing an apology.

The No Doubt Website currently features the following message: “As a multi-racial band our foundation is built upon both diversity and consideration for other cultures. Our intention with our new video was never to offend, hurt or trivialize Native American people, their culture or their history. Although we consulted with Native American friends and Native American studies experts at the University of California, we realize now that we have offended people. This is of great concern to us and we are removing the video immediately. The music that inspired us when we started the band, and the community of friends, family, and fans that surrounds us was built upon respect, unity and inclusiveness. We sincerely apologize to the Native American community and anyone else offended by this video. Being hurtful to anyone is simply not who we are.”

Next thing you know, No Doubt will be apologizing for Stefani's Harajuku Girls, for the mass cultural appropriation of bindis, and for spending its early years rocking the kind of track pants favoured by four-out-of-five Eastern European males.”

At the moment you can still find the “Looking Hot” video on the Web if you look hard enough. Like below. And, not to be politically incorrect, but, correct us if we’re wrong in thinking that Stefani is still totally looking hot.

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Comments (7) Add New Comment
upon viewing
Nov 5, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Culturally insensitive and stereotyping? Yes, and it sounds like the band realizes that now. But dam Gwen, why are you so hot? A better way would have been just having her portray a really hot, gun slinging cowgirl.
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KiDDAA Magazine
Nov 6, 2012 at 11:20 am
The guitarist Tony Kanal is an East Indian. Was the video racist? Dont really know but I have seen enough racial stereotypes about East Indians, blacks, Mexicans, Arabs-Muslims on TV and video, media to last a lifetime. So now they go after First Nations. Wouldnt be the first time that a white guy or a Jewish director of MTV or Hollywood movies puts out revolting stereotypes.
Making someone inferior is a good way of taking away their dignity. That being said Gwen is a very beautiful and open minded woman as she dated Tony and loved Indian food.
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Outside Looking In
Nov 8, 2012 at 4:51 pm
Since in the real America the "cowboys" and the "Indians" were the same race and species and originating from different historical periods, much like Washington and Geronimo, and Howard Hughes and Burt Reynolds, and Americans don't come in Persian or asian or negro, but white or red or tan, this explains some military intelligence behind the democracy of electing Obama post 9/11, especially in the military intelligence superpower nation of America which isn't actually even a democracy, in case you didn't know. Ka-ching!! Ms. Stefani and company sound to be someones government workpiece, or shall we say "blunt instrument", musical pun intended or not. Whether it's the bad guys or someone on the side of our allies, I cannot be entirely certain. Either way, it's LOOKING HOT!!
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Devon
Nov 9, 2012 at 10:46 am
The issue isn't about "political correctness (which is a vacuous term no one seems able to pin down), it's about people of privilege who live in a post-colonial (that is, colonial) setting belittling the very people who are (and have been for generations) the victims of overt and explicit racial and cultural oppression. This is not just a historical phenomenon, it is ongoing. It's not about offending delicate sensibilities, it's about people in positions of privilege flaunting that privilege at the expense of those over whom they hold privilege. Aboriginal people are not some cute mythical creatures, they are living people who exist in our communities and are regularly faced with culturally offensive parodies of their people-- insults which they endure as a marginalized group from the dominant group.
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Stefanie
Nov 9, 2012 at 1:10 pm
To the authors of this article and editors at the Straight,

When I read the Guardians' response to Gwen Stefani's newest music video, I gained even more respect for Guardian and their journalists - that they are so on top of their game, smart, sensitive and educated about these issues.

I agree with you that "political correctedness" can become a game, where who is most hyper-educated often "wins"- but everyone loses as the issues on the table are rarely faced or acted upon, besieged beneath "theory" and "analysis".

But this here is an issue of education, compassion and sensitivity.

With this piece published here by the Straight, I have lost all the respect I had for the Georgia Straight. I live in Vancouver and assume the authors do as well - as well as the editors of this local publicaiton. I am disappointed that these journalists who live on unceded Coast Salish Territories are not educated about colonialism, firstly, and secondly, about issues of cultural appropriation, which I know many in Vancouver are sensitive to, given the history of this place, and the ongoing violence, marginalization and struggle faced by certain groups here.


Here is the text from Priya Elan of the Guardian: Titled, A bad attack of feather and teepee syndrome. All I ask is that you read it:

So you think I’m looking
hot?” sings Gwen Stefani
on No Doubt’s new single
Looking Hot. If the reaction to
the video is anything to go by, the
answer is most definitely a “not”.
In the clip, Stefani plays a
Native American princess in a
variety of culturally question-
able garb (feathered headdress,
tasselled tribal dress, moccasin
boots). We see her emoting in a
teepee, getting handcuffed to a
wall by cowboys and generally
making like a blonde Pocahontas
in a Roy Rogers-inspired Vogue
shoot.
Village People and Adam Ant
may have used similar visuals
without problems, but that was
30-odd years ago. It seems obvi-
ous that in 2012 the band would
catch flak for their inaccurate and
insensitive appropriation of Native
American culture. Hours after it
premiered (and two days into Na-
tive American History month) the
clip’s “dislikes” had jumped from
60 to 700 on YouTube, with one
commentator calling Stefani out
for “debasing all Native American
women” and perpetuating the
colonial image of the “Savage
Indian”. Author Sherman Alexie
tweeted that the band turned
“500 years of colonialism into
a silly dance song and fashion
show”. The video was pulled
almost immediately and the
group released a statement saying
that diversity and “consideration
for other cultures” was important
to them.
“We call this the ‘leather,
feather, teepee and tomahawks’
syndrome,” says Barrie Cox-
Dacre, executive director of the
International North American
Indian Association UK. “A lot
of people think they can put an
inaccurate plastic bonnet on and
some grease paint and that’s OK,
but it’s not.”
For Stefani, the line between a
Madonna-like pop culture magpie
and plain old cultural naivety has
been a fine one. As the blog Laist
points out, the singer has got into
trouble with her use of bindis as
a fashion accessory (in the video
for Just A Girl from 1995) and the
troupe of slave-like Harajuku
Girls she used in the visuals for
her 2004 solo album Love Angel
Music Baby. Comic Margaret
Cho likened them to a “minstrel
show”, while MAD TV parodied
the trend with a Stefani lookalike
singing the satirical song Aren’t
Asians Great? (sung to the tune of
The Sweet Escape). It seems like
some people never learn.

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Consider Things
Nov 9, 2012 at 1:31 pm
"Indigenous women have been exploited by colonisers for prostitution since the days of Christopher Columbus, and the impact of this history of sexual violence still rears its ugly head today. In the US, data indicates that Native American and Alaskan Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than non-Native women, with 86% of the perpetrators being non-Native. In Canada, Aboriginal women between the ages of 25 and 44 are five times more likely than all other Canadian women in the same age group to die as a result of violence. Suddenly, the overt sexualisation and victimisation of Native American women in a pop video might not seem so trivial.

There is no doubt that many find Native American culture "beautiful" and "intriguing". They may even want to pay homage to it in various outlets. But this is a very tricky and difficult terrain to tread, even with the best intentions."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/06/no-doubt-native-amer...
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Peter Tallio
Nov 10, 2012 at 11:20 am
It is Mike Usinger's attitude toward Xewlmexc people that is most telling, an example of how ingrained and pervasive this racism is in Canada. He reduces the feelings and opinions of indigenous people to being less important than the desire of men to view music videos with scantily clad women. No Doubt did the right thing by removing the video in question. It indicates a shift in attitude that Mike Usinger might consider acknowledging at least. At Least.
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