This Run The Jewels Video Is A Powerful Meditation On Police Brutality
“Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it.”
Run the Jewels have released a video for "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)," the Run the Jewels 2 cut featuring Rage Against the Machine's Zack De La Rocha. Directed by A.G. Rojas, it centers on an (increasingly fatigued) altercation between a black man (played by Keith Stanfield of Short Term 12 and Selma) and a white cop (Boardwalk Empire's Shea Whigham)—and do make sure you watch all the way through to the end.
"Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)" is "provocative, and we all knew this, so we were tasked with making something that expressed the intensity of senseless violence without eclipsing our humanity," Rojas wrote in an accompanying statement. "The film begins and it feels like they have been fighting for days, they're exhausted, not a single punch is thrown, their violence is communicated through clumsy, raw emotion. They've already fought their way past their judgments and learned hatred toward one another. Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it."
