Over the past couple of months, there has been controversy over Taylor Swift’s music video for “Shake It Off”, a song responding to the media that teases her for her inability to dance. In the video, she “shakes off” the criticism, saying “haters gonna hate” while dancing awkwardly amongst other talented dancers in various styles. The style of concern was a twerking sequence. Some are claiming the use of twerking was racist because Taylor used black female dancers as “props."
Others disagree with that claim for multiple reasons. The sequence did not consist of not
only black girls, but also girls of other races twerking. There were also black girls in the other dance sequences, showing they’re “capable” of other styles of dance that some would consider more ‘respectable’ or ‘refined’ than twerking. Furthermore, twerking wasn’t represented as ‘black culture’. The twerking girls aren’t being ‘used’ to represent a certain culture.
One can assume, anyway, that the video producers chose dancers based on their ability. I doubt the video producers would hire people of a certain race
to learn their assigned style of dance for a music video. All of the break dancers were skilled in their dance, as were the ballet dancers,
interpretive dancers, and twerkers. Every dance sequence featured various races, and the dancers were all shown as experts passionate about their style of dance. None were shown as a joke or mockery of dance. All were showing their dance as a legitimate performance.
Taylor was the joke. She was the single dancer to ‘mock’ among all others who are extremely competent in dance. When we see her face reacting to the other dancers, she’s amazed by their talent and confused as to how they can perform so well. In all sequences, she’s completely lost. Taylor is the joke of the entire music video.
I won’t say that some less than ideal choices were made in the twerking sequence, though. Having the girls wear shorts makes sense: the focus of twerking is, undeniably, the butt. People can interpret the cropped animal print hoodies and large gold jewelry, unfortunately, as cultural appropriation.