The UN has a new PSA about landmines that none of the networks here in the US seem to be willing to air.
http://www.stoplandmines.org/slm/index.html
It shows a girls' soccer game in the US. A mine explodes on the field, apparently killing & injuring players. It closes with a tag line over audio of parents and kids screaming on the field: "If there were landmines here, would you stand for them anywhere? Help the U.N. eradicate landmines everywhere."
View the ad here or bittorrent here (Quicktime movie, ~8mb). Be warned, it is hard to watch.
Brutal. Effective and pointedly-truthful, but brutal. It's even worse if you watch the ad knowing what's going to happen beforehand. The question is, does the ad go too far?
My first thought was, it's too much. Too graphic. But after thinking about it more, I think it's exactly the sort of clue-by-four necessary to whack the complacent US public upside the head. Since when is it OK for children worldwide to be killed or maimed by these things but not OK if the victims are little white suburban girls in the US?1
1: Note that the US, Cuba and Haiti are the only nations in the western hemisphere who have not ratified the antipersonnel mine ban treaty
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I like these comments better because I don't have to post as anonymous. But it won't let me use the <_blink_> tag.
ReplyDeleteI saw the video too. I really hope it gets some air time here. Its really quite deplorable that we've avoided signing the treaty. Business is business, I guess. No matter the karmic costs. Wait - are we starting to see the dividends?
Aaah! Not the BLINK tag! Anything but that!
ReplyDeleteOK, well maybe not anything ... embedded monophonic MIDI backgrounds wouldn't be particularly welcome, either. ;-)
Sadly, I suspect only those of us who already "get it" (or, people like me who have friends who "get it") are going to see this ad. Joe Sixpack down in the Bible Belt (which seems to cover the entire nation from Nevada to Virginia) isn't ever going to have the opportunity to see it.
Since when is it OK for children worldwide to be killed or maimed by these things but not OK if the victims are little white suburban girls in the US?Wait, are you implying there was a time when that wasn't the case?
ReplyDeleteWait, are you implying there was a time when that wasn't the case?I'd like to think that in less jaded and complacent times, the US public would respond differently than the current callous apathy regarding the misfortunes of the world around us. As it is, unless the victims happen to hold US citizenship, nobody in the US seems to give a damn.
ReplyDeleteHell, even if a child is abducted in the US, it only makes news if it's a WASP upper-middle class burb-ite. If the victim is so unfortunate to have brown or black or yellow or (insert ethnicity here) skin they might get a one-liner in the local police blotter. But if it's a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl from a McMansion, it makes to top of the national evening news.
Maybe I'm the jaded one, but I don't see anyone in the US caring much about genocide in the Sudan or people killed or maimed by the landmines we laid in Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos.