Born Free

M.I.A.'s video for her new song “Born Free” is a well-crafted, harrowing political allegory well worth ten minutes of your time. I warn you: it's scary, gruesome and, as they say, “not safe to watch at work;” if you can't watch that sort of thing, check out Jezebel's synopsis.

It's better if you see it without having the surprise spoiled. But unhappily—and of course this is the point—the surprise isn't, fundamentally, surprising. Just like Zbigniew Libera's Lego kit, it is simultaneously absurd yet familiar, and that terrible familiarity is the point.