14 DAY TRIAL // Katy Perry’s latest music video, for the single “Dark Horse,” is getting a lot of people talking online, and it’s not just because of how expensive, colorful, or – depending on who you ask – stupid it is. Over 38,000 people also deem it offensive to Muslims and want it pulled from YouTube.
For the record, just to help you get an idea of how popular the video is, it now stands at over 29 million hits on Katy Perry’s VEVO channel. You can also find it embedded in full below, in case you missed the offensive imagery when you watched it the first time.
The petition over at Change.org demands that YouTube ban the video immediately or, at the very least, that it pull it until Katy’s people edit the demeaning imagery from it.
“The video is considered as highly controversial to its viewers as a result of its portrayal of blasphemy. At 01:15 into the video Dark Horse; a man is shown being burned, whilst wearing a pendant (also burned) forming the word ‘Allah,’ which is the arabic word for God,” the petition reads.
“Such goes to show, that blasphemy is clearly conveyed in the video, since Katy Perry (who appears to be representing an opposition of God) engulfs the believer and the word God in flames,” adds the text.
Officially, YouTube doesn’t have to do anything about the video no matter how many signatures the petition gets, but Perry’s people might be moved to action if more are gathered, because a large-scale controversy can never be beneficial for an artist. Especially if we’re talking about an artist who aims to appeal to all people, like Katy here.
“This is the reason for lodging the petition so that people from different walks of life, different religions and from different parts of the world, agree that the video promotes blasphemy, using the name of God in an irrelevant and distasteful manner would be considered inappropriate by any religion. We hope that the video itself depicting such images is removed,” the petition says.
So far, Katy has not addressed the furor online in any way. It wouldn’t be the first time she finds herself in such troubled waters either since, just recently, she was criticized for dressing up as a geisha for a live performance, with many saying she was pushing stereotypes onto her young fans, and thus degrading the Japanese culture.
Weeks after this happened (at the American Music Awards 2013), Katy explained in an interview she meant the whole act as a tribute to the Japanese culture, not as an insult. It’s hard to imagine she can talk herself so easily out of this controversy too.
