One of the dancers from Mastodon's booty-filled music video for "The Motherload" took to Tumblr recently to defend the clip after public criticism surfaced that it is racist and sexist. In a post titled "Mastodon 'The Motherload' and the Only Opinion That Counts," Jade, who appeared in the video, shared her experience with working on the project, Revolver noted.
"At the end of August, I danced with some friends for Mastodon's new video, 'The Motherload,'" she wrote. "We were stoked about it. Twerking in a metal video?! Unheard of! We came from varying backgrounds, classical dancers, pole dancers, strippers all nervously waiting in the common area wondering how we'd all fit in. Well that was a piece of cake. As soon as the music played, we felt jazzed — in fact, they asked us if we'd prefer to dance to some hip-hop instead and then they'd remove the sound and add their track. We declined."
Jade said that while most fans understood that the twerk-heavy video was a shout-out to Mastodon's hometown of Atlanta, she was surprised by the accusations of racism and sexism. She also did not appreciate the derogatory labels some people used to describe the dancers.
"Funny, the most sexist and racist sentiments came not from filming the actual video, but from a subset of metal fans who thought we simply didn't belong," she continued. "If anything, the video shoot was welcoming, the band clever and pleasant, and the girls bonded almost the second the music dropped. Much like the band, we weren't concerned with thin, knee-jerk reactions to asses and twerking."
The video, as Jade pointed out, crossed multiple cultural barriers with African-American women performing a dance style that is typically reserved for hip-hop in a metal video.
"These fears boil down into my one response: we all belong," she said.
Check out the video below:
