Arcade Fire's Win Butler Responds To 'We Exist' Criticism

It's only been a couple of days since Laura Jane Grace, the frontwoman of the now-unmanaged Against Me!, spoke out against Arcade Fire's controversial video for their song We Exist, but the latter band's frontman Win Butler has now defended the clip in an interview with The Advocate.

In the interview, he explains, somewhat circuitously, that the band's decision to cast Andrew Garfield in the video's lead role as a transgender woman – the issue with which Grace has taken umbrage – was seeded in the song's Jamaican roots.

We Exist, like a few songs on the band's most recent album Reflektor, was written in Jamaica, and is designed to reflect the heavily homophobic culture that pervades the country.

"There is a very kind of homophobic undercurrent, even in a lot of popular music and dancehall music, where there is a lot of violence against gay people," Butler told The Advocate. "And we were in Kingston, and we went to this kind of film event and met some gay Jamaican kids and just kind of talked to them and realised that they were constantly under the threat of violence.”

"For me, just meeting these kids in Jamaica and then imagining this conversation between a son and his father," Butler continued, expaining We Exist's genesis. "That was the emotional kernel."

"Once something gets on the Internet, it works its way into people's lives in a way that I think is pretty powerful," Butler said. "For a gay kid in Jamaica to see the actor who played Spider-Man in that role is pretty damn powerful, in my opinion."

While Grace's original comment was merely prodding the band about the choice to cast a heterosexual, cisgender (non-trans*) male as a transgender woman, she later compared it to white actors using blackface and lamented that it plays on and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.

Regardless, as far as justifying Garfield's presence in the video, Butler seems confident in the creative decision with which the band went.

 "There was just so much thought and love that went into the video I don't personally see it as negative," Butler said, though he conceded: "I can totally see the sensitivity of the issue."

The video's director, David Wilson, explained that he was sold on Garfield being given the role after a particularly impassioned telephone conversation – but that he had considered casting a transgender person before changing his mind.

"But then getting on the phone with Andrew, and Andrew's commitment and passion toward the project was just overwhelming,” he said. “For an actor of that calibre to be that emotionally invested in a music video is just a very special thing. It just completely made sense."

Once more with feeling, you can watch the We Exist clip here: