M.I.A. has been issued a legal notice by Paris Saint-Germain F.C. requesting she remove her video for ‘Borders’ from the Internet.
The ‘Paper Planes’ hitmaker has shared a letter she was sent by the French soccer team after officials were angered that she wore a PSG away shirt on which the sponsor’s slogan had been altered to "Fly Pirates" instead of ‘Fly Emirates’, in the video which deals with the Syrian migrant crisis.
M.I.A. insists the club has "gone over their head" asking for her to "cease all use of the image and brand, and compensate the franchise for damages incurred as a result of the video", because she believes it’s simply a "fashion issue" not political.
She said: "Obviously I don’t want to talk about fashion, but this is a fashion issue. You know, it’s a T-shirt. And the bigger picture and the bigger message in the video is completely ignored. It’s gone over their head. And I think that it’s really difficult to control something like that."
And M.I.A. – whose real name is Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam – thinks the PSG hierarchy is "stupid" in thinking they can "control" the branding of her video.
In an interview with www.democracynow.org, she added: "I think for (Paris Saint-Germain F.C.) to control that is a really stupid thing. You know, I can’t control something like that. And it’s just realistic, I thought, in representing the migrant community. You know, how do you leave that piece out if you’re making something or trying to make something realistic?"
M.I.A. in video row with Paris Saint-Germain F.C.
