I finally made it through the film Chicuarotes, which features this great version of "I Fought The Law:"

I can't tell if singing it in Nāhuatlahtolli is an attempt at "decolonization," which is the kind of thing you'd expect from people today, or simply an interesting artistic decision made for reasons of being beautiful, which is what it should be.  Considering the fact that the song is an American classic titled "I FOUGHT THE LAW (and the law won)," I'm hoping it's at least 50% the latter.  Unlike the disconsolate, childish, sex-obsessed regressives who dominate political discourse today, I don't believe a work of art needs to be 100% of anything to be valid.  In fact, most "art" that is 100% of something is generally 100% self-righteous and/or agenda-ridden, dated garbage with no spiritual or intellectual breathing room whatsoever.  Propaganda, in other words.

It is a great song, after all, which is the only thing smart people used to care about.  And still is, to those of us who haven't outsourced our thinking to the despotic, victim-tripping Minichrist-du-jour.

Great songs transcend "decolonization," which is just another word for colonization.  This song would probably survive any miserable interpretation imposed on it.  Why not just let the ART BREAK DOWN THE WALLS?  Is it because art sets you free?  Because if there's anything people hate, it's a free individual.  Submit or die, is the creed of all artless cultists and religious legalists.  Which is everybody these days. 

Resist.

In fact, this song is a perfect example of why people need to leave each other alone, if they want to "decolonize" anything.  If "colonization" is a process of forced compliance, forcing people to "decolonize" is simply another form of colonization.  This song shows why artists (and all people) need to be left to themselves to make their own decisions, and why art, happiness, or joy can never be performed or created by committee.  The individual artists WANTED to sing the song, because it was fun and/or spoke to them in some way (such as being fun).  They didn't have to be forced to do it.  The song wants to be sung, again and again, for generations.  It has passed the test of time in ways that the dated propaganda produced by sound-file manufacturers today never will.

Chicuarotes is a good movie and I recommend it, but I once tried and failed to get through another film starring the director (Gael García Bernal), in which he played some angry thief who snaps at his mother for using the English word for "fruitcake," because it's too "colonial."  For this reason, I think it's possible that Natalia Lafourcade is making a self-righteous political statement by choosing to sing the song in Nāhuatlahtolli for the soundtrack, but it's not necessary, and any motive she may or may not have does not show through or tarnish the beauty of the work.  Her motives (or lack thereof) are her problem.  The work stands on its own, and crosses oceans and mountains and boundaries effortlessly, because it's great.  It's a great song.  It doesn't care about the politics of the singer.  It doesn't need them. 

No real art ever does.

These three interpretations of this song prove that, left to exercise their own free will in a state of freedom and individual liberty, people will tear down their own walls and erase their own borders, when they have decided for themselves there is something to be gained by doing so (devaluing and undermining your domestic workforce may not be the same thing as singing a fun, timeless song in a weird, forgotten language).

When forced to comply, however, people will resist.  We were not created for forced compliance; it's not in our nature.  At most, it's a kink.  A rare one, I am certain, engaged in willingly, as an act of free will, by the people who possess it.  When robbed of the ability to make their own decisions, people will not naturally thrive, think, or even breathe fully.  We were created for individuality and free will, not conformity and forced compliance.  The resistance of the oppressed might only take the form of secret, unexpressed loathing, but the colonizers will never win the hearts and minds of real individuals, whether free or enslaved, regardless of the perceived heights from which they spout the reasons for submitting to them.

Ironically, this song which transcends cultural boundaries and reaches effortlessly across the span of decades is about losing the war with "the law." 

Who, exactly, is raging against the law these days?  Is it the people who believe in setting people free to live their lives and make their own decisions as God created us to,

or is it the people who believe that this law of individual freedom can be subverted and over-ruled by their imagination?  People who believe that this forced re-imagining of human nature is a "creative" act, rather than the destructive one it actually is?

Don't fight the law of human freedom.  You were created for something better.  Stop wasting time, and learn to embrace the law of freedom, so we can all have a chance.  If "nothing is sufficient" for you, however, and you believe you are engaged in a creative act every time you tear something down, Natalia Lafourcade has a song for that as well.

Thanks for listening.