Lebanese indie band, Mashrou' Leila, is back with yet another powerful music video titled 'Roman' ... and people are completely in love.
"Equality. Solidarity. Intersectionality," writes the band in a Facebook post, announcing the release of their latest single.
Intersectionality - a term coined in 1989 - is a "view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity."
With their music video, directed by Jessy Mousallem, Mashrou' Leila aims to fight the narrative that Arab and Muslim women are victims of oppression by encouraging a fight for their rights.
The music video intentionally "toys with the intersection of gender with race by celebrating and championing a coalition of Arab and Muslim women, styled to over-articulate their ethnic background, in a manner more typically employed by Western media to victimize them," the band writes in the YouTube description.
The music video features a number of women - hijabis and non-hijabis alike - as they challenge the narrative while "celebrating the various modalities of Middle Eastern feminism."
The video and lyrics work in parallel "to disturb the dominant global narrative of hyper-secularized (white) feminism," the band adds.
"How can you sell me to the Romans ... how did I lose you to the Romans?" the song lyrics say, referencing ancient Roman control of the region as a metaphor for male dominance.
The video intends to "revert the position of [males] as the heroes of the narrative ... by representing them as individuals who (literally) take the backseat as the coalition moves forward."
"How can you sell me to the Romans? How did I lose you to the Romans?"
"Strangle the soul that I created for you. But before you bury me, tell me what was my price?"
The video treats "oppression, not as a source of victimhood, but as the fertile ground from which resistance can be weaponized."
People fell absolutely in love, getting chills despite the summer heat
"My heart is in my throat"
The visuals are incredibly powerful
One word: "Powerful"
