Videos set in Africa must have Africans in them

This makes no sense. There were and are white enclaves in Africa

Taylor Swift's latest music video is being battered by critics who claim it is racist and pandering to 'rich white fantasies' from a colonial era. 

The video for Wildest Dreams, which was revealed during the MTV VMA Awards coverage on Sunday, has a mainly white cast and revolves around two 1950s-era movie stars - played by Swift and Gran Torino actor Scott Eastwood - filming in Africa.

There are only two black actors, who play soldiers, and they appear in the background. The mock film crew are white.

Director Joseph Khan insists the video is a 'love story' and has no political agenda. But music fans have rushed to Twitter to describe it as 'colonial garbage'.

The footage was also also slammed by a number of editorials.

NPR's Viviane Rutabingwa, who has an African heritage, said: 'We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa.'

The video's director, Joseph Khan, released a statement to Daily mail Online, saying: 'Wildest Dreams is a song about a relationship that was doomed, and the music video concept was that they were having a love affair on location away from their normal lives. This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950.

'There are black Africans in the video in a number of shots, but I rarely cut to crew faces outside of the director as the vast majority of screentime is Taylor and Scott.

'We cast and edited this video. We collectively decided it would have been historicially inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would have been accused of rewriting history. This video is set in the past by a crew set in the present and we are all proud of our work.

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