I’ll take my love militarism and racism-free, thank you.
As image-makers we have a responsibility and we are accountable for the images we produce, at least that’s the world I want to live and produce in . Sophie Muller fails hard at responsible image making, integrity and art with Sade’s Solider of Love video.

***Sophie Muller***
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***Sade Adu***
Let me be real, mostly I’m upset because this is SADE!!! Nothing more. Nothing less. The best. Sade. This is the sole reason for this plaintiff wail, “Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?”
The song is beautiful, like ALL of her others. Sade’s voice, her artistry. The long-waited return of the songstress my mother introduced me to– it was 1984 and my single, Black mom made her debut in the kitchen, me waiting patiently at the table for something burnt, dry or cold while she belted out “your kisses ring/ round and round and round my head…” I’ll never forget the confusion in seeing my mom swoon at the stove like that. She was feelin’ it. Moved by the lyrics to skate across the kitchen floor in front of me- I didn’t know my mom had “those” feelings until those moments came to pass. Soldier of love takes us all back, if not there, then at the very least somewhere. That’s what we live for in Sade songs. That’s what I felt again the day the song hit the internet and rumors began to fly that a new album was coming. The confirmation of Feb 8, 2010 made 2009 not look that bad afterall, there was indeed something worthwhile coming. (A flair for the dramatic is appropriate when describing anything to do with the force that is Ms. Adu.)
I digress. Back to what offended me artistically and intellectually. Sophie Muller’s video…
Simply put, the video is a tragic attempt at manifesting powerful images to match the song’s simplicity or it’s simultaneous complexity. On a deeper level it is irresponsible and offensive.
Let’s start with the cheesiness and get the easy part out of the way: A stage, a screen, a budget and some bad dance moves does not a music video make. Add to it a white horse, lassos, silver Lamé! and smoke canisters and we are moving from cheesy to problematic faster than the Tiger Wood’s scandal become unbearable. Please tell me that all they had access to was a tired Hollywood back lot or sound stage and an even more tired, in fact retired, trunk of props and costumes and I’ll tell you that you are a liar. I’ll tell you that anyone in any of my video classes, from the 8 year olds to the 70 year olds, from the poets to the working class mothers and the working class mother poets, any or all of them with no budget, and almost anyone in the world would have made a better video for this song than what we have here:
Okay, so, should I choose to brush the silly images of horses and crashing waves under the rug, then what do I do with the truly problematic images that follow?
Do we (me, you and Sophie Muller) really need to play “Cowboys and Indians” in the video? Sure Sade proclaims “It’s the wild wild West” and we thank the heavens that she also decrees, “I’m doin’ my best.” The lassos and white horse were not anyone’s best (idea). Avatar was enough of the new fangled cowboys and Indians for me this year. Please someone at least try to give us something other than fictionalized fantasies of our oppressor or romanticized (brutal) reality of cowboys, soldiers, corporations and destruction. I do not want Sade to be cast in that role, it doesn’t change anything about it. Neither does the image of her as an imperialist forces leader.
I don’t want to imagine Smooth Operator Sade, as the leader of any Blackwater/Xe force, which her dancers simplistically call up with their stomping and (finger) gun pointing. Maybe I am giving her too much credit but Sade could move the world with a single whisper. …if she grabbed the mic and whispered “please world, recycle” you wouldn’t catch another bottle floating down a river nor a cellphone or battery in a landfill. Never. Ever again. Her force is not a violent one, but using the imagery of the violent forces of the world is a dangerous undertaking.
These seemingly benign and even mistaken for “appropriate,” if not obvious, images are based on the song’s title “_Soldier_ of Love.” In my mind soldiers of love are Mumia, George Jackson, Lil Bobby Hutton, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, Sara Gomez, Audre Lorde, Poolan Devi, and so on and so forth.

A soldier of love is not a dancing gun pointing fool; I honestly don’t believe that is what Sade had in mind when she wrote and recorded this song. (Or at least I hope not.)
That’s not the end of the horror of this video either.
What we have next is heartbreaking to me.
The Violent/Dangerous Black man follows her. She subdues him. Only to then encounter another man, but this time a white, or fair skinned man who… wait for it… unveils Sade and then becomes the love interest she falls, literally, for. God help me, I don’t know where to begin here. I can only ask why are we still having to watch these played out images? I am not going to be the brown warrior and unpack the nap sack of racism step by step here. Today I refuse. Maybe tomorrow. But please feel free to do your own research if you don’t get why this part is stomach-churning. Many, many brilliant people of all colors have written about this. It’s called racism, no, better yet let’s call it what it really is, it’s white supremacy. This is not about if Sade, or any other individual, has a white boyfriend or husband or lover. Remember this is a music video, not a autobiography and not in the context of race-relations debates.
This is another dangerous uncontextualized 4 minutes in pop culture that will creep past our eyes, replete with problematic imagery that never gets checked. And that is, partially, why I am angry about it.









