Post date: Oct 14, 2016 9:4:13 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQ-IoHfimQ
In Save the Children's 2014 video entitled "Most Shocking Second a Day Video," the British filmmakers follow the life of a British little girl by showing a second each day. Over the course of the video, we see her celebrating her birthday with family and friends, playing with dolls while the television talks about an impending war, overhearing her parents fight over whether or not to stay in the country, taking refuge in the basement during a bombing, surviving a shooting with her mother in the street, leaving behind her father, and finally ending up in a refugee camp. The video ends with the words "Just because it isn't happening here doesn't mean it isn't happening." It is meant to elicit an emotional reaction from a Western audience because of the implication that this is happening to thousands of little girls who go unnoticed because they aren't British. The filmmakers are arguing that Western audiences only care about a child if they look, act, and sound British (or, presumably, other forms of Western ethnicities). The sufferer needs to be a child (especially a female child), and she needs to be completely removed from her, in this case, Syrian context. This is similar to how some Orientalist painters and writers conceived of the Middle East, particularly Northern Africa, as Europe's, stagnant, classical past. While this has all sorts of implications for modern Western audiences, I have to wonder what this means about Western mass media, especially if we take Said's argument that depictions of the Middle East have far more to do with the depicters (aka the West) than those being depicted. Certainly, part of the reason for its efficacy is that people are more likely to respond emotionally (and hopefully donate) if the context directly relates to themselves (i.e., the child looks, acts, and sounds like children the viewer knows). That being said, Western mass media also floods the world news stage with images of suffering children and adults from "non-Western" contexts on a daily basis. This "poverty porn" has desensitized audiences to horrific images so that a viewer is left thinking, "Of course children are dying in Syria. It's a non-Western country/the Middle East." Therefore, violence, disease, poverty, and suffering are expected. And because it is expected, dramatic measures must be taken to force audiences to care about the lives of people across the globe.