Watch this stirring pro-Muslim American PSA, produced by Katy Perry
History has a tendency of repeating itself, but it's often too late before we realize it.
In a commanding short film, a new PSA—with Katy Perry as executive producer—asks us to take a moment to asses the parallels between historic tragedies and the fear of many Muslim-Americans in the wake of a Donald Trump administration.
Directed by Japanese-Australian filmmaker Aya Tanimura, the video tells the true story of 89-year-old Haru Kuromiya who was raised in Riverside, California, and lived through President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order to place all those of Japanese descent in internment camps.
"We were an American farm family now living in an internment camp and our constitutional rights were taken away from us," Kuromiya says. "It all started with fear and rumors..."
There's a particular plot twist in the video intended to provoke a powerful parallel between the history of Japanese internment camps and the looming threat of the president-elect's Muslim registry.
Near the end—spoiler ahead—the woman who we think is Kuromiya is actually another woman, actress Hina Khan, in prosthetics. It's Katy Perry's blank check contribution that allowed for the financing of prosthetic materials.
The casting of a young Pakistani woman to play an elderly Japanese woman may give viewers pause despite the true story of Kuromiya and the PSA's undoubtedly good intentions. As director Tanimura said to the LA Times on Khan's role, "casting a Muslim actress was non-negotiable," yet the same level of intentionality in casting decisions was not granted to Kuromiya and those who lived through the internment camps. It's a bold yet confusing choice to cast a young actress to retell Kuromiya's very personal struggle.
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Regardless of questionable execution, the paramount message is a crucial one and the PSA helps bring it into clearer focus: "Don't turn against each other out of fear."
[H/T Jezebel]
