The Japanese pop band, Mrs Green Apple, has apologized and pulled their latest music video after a backlash formed over the video’s depiction of native peoples as monkeys while one of the band members appeared in the video dressed as Christopher Columbus.
The band posted its video for a song entitled, “Columbus,” last Wednesday, but pulled it down the very next day after a backlash formed over the images in the video.
The video, which was originally part of Coca-Cola’s celebrity music campaign, featured one band member dressed as famed explorer Christopher Columbus, while a second was dressed as French Emperor Napoleon, and the third as garbed as Beethoven. The Beethoven character was even seen holding a banana in one of the scenes.
Japanese music band Mrs. GREEN APPLE who did the opening, Inferno for Fire Force, has pulled their latest music video, "Columbus", after huge outrage for depicting themselves as explorers and the native people as monkeys.
— Anime News And Facts (@AniNewsAndFacts) June 14, 2024
The band has issued an apology stating that their… pic.twitter.com/ytDQK8H7J7
Mrs. Green Apple’s label, EMI Records, and management agency, Project-MGA, issued a joint statement apologizing for the release, according to Electric Bloom.
“We deeply apologize for the inconvenience caused to everyone. Our pre-release review was insufficient. We will take utmost care in the future to ensure that such incidents do not recur and deliver works that everyone can enjoy,” the statement read.
With the controversy so hot, the band also canceled an appearance on the TBS TV show, CDTV Live!.
The band itself wrote its own apology, saying. “From the beginning, we were afraid that someone would see the appearance of monkeys in the video as discrimination, but we had no intention of comparing monkeys to humans. We did not want to offend anyone or affirm a tragic history.”
The band, which formed in 2013, had a breakthrough song by supplying the theme song for the Anime show Fire Force in 2015.
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