Let's Save Africa!
I am going to analyse the SAIH Norway video Let's Save Africa! - Gone Wrong. Ostensibly a satirical work (the YouTube video description states 'We're messing with you'), I hope to argue that this video is in fact promoting discourse opposite to its intention. To do this I am going to use the concepts of contrapuntal reading (Said) and the reality effect (Barthes).
Contrapuntal reading is reading with an "awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts" (Said 51). It also means reading a text "with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England" (Said 66). With this in mind what follows is my own close contrapuntal reading of the SAIH Norway video.
The video starts with Thomas Newman-esque light piano music conjuring feelings of sadness, empathy and poignancy. A viewer used to this style of music and aware of its use in popular media immediately knows that what is coming will be either a charity appeal, upsetting images and story or a combination of these things. The average Western viewer prepares themselves for a window onto a world that is not their own (even if aspects of it may also hold true for them). The music and history of that use of music for the Western viewer signify that we are about to experience the other. Together with this music the viewer is presented with an establishing shot of a woman carrying a bucket on her head and a boy walking through a desolated landscape along with the caption 'Somewhere in Africa…' Here the video producers show their awareness of the charity appeal video tropes and execute them exactly as the Western viewer expects.
Not more than 15 seconds into the near 3 and a half minute video the discourse described above is rudely shattered as the woman falls, the boy starts laughing and an off screen Western voice shouts 'cut!' The Western viewer is jumped into another now familiar discourse which I call dupe awareness. This meta/post modern discourse, in its infancy disorientating but to those used to it comforting, is employed by the videos' creators to enact just that affect. The Western viewer is relieved to some extent that the sadness and horror they were expecting will no longer be taking place. Instead they are now amused and intrigued as to which direction the work will take and give a knowing wink to any fellow viewer they are with. The other, pre this technique, was almost only viewable to the modern television viewing Westerner through this style. The apparent awareness of this by SAIH Norway seemingly has caused them to deconstruct such with this video and their work in general through the Radi-Aid Awards (Rusty Radiator). It is my view however that, while there are good intentions and a drive for change behind the work, what we are actually seeing is the unintentional same othering happening given a post modern slant.
After the jump in the video to this alternative discourse we see it reinforced through a further establishing shot of the crew filming the woman and boy. We then discover that the boy is in fact an actor and has a Western, selfish, celebrity attitude. Again, the viewer winks to their companion with a wry smile.
Barthes concept of the reality effect in literature fits in nicely here: "[I]t is logical that literary realism should have been - give or take a few decades - contemporary with the regnum of "objective" history, to which must be added the contemporary development of techniques, of works, and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate the 'real': the photograph (immediate witness of 'what was here'), reportage, exhibitions of ancient objects (the success of the Tutankhamen show makes this quite clear), the tourism of monuments and historical sites." (Barthes 146) My argument is that the video authenticates the 'real' while thinking it is doing the opposite. The creators want to subvert the 'real' traditionally shown by unmasking the creative process it thinks typical charity appeal videos use. The viewer sees a constructed, cynical standpoint which may or may not be the reality behind the creation of these videos. What the video does above all else is support NAIH Norway's (Western) agenda and work. At the end of the video and, after it has reinforced the point it made in the first 30 seconds through the rest of its duration, we are left in the same situation as before the video started. The viewer does not care about the lives of the poor and starving in Africa but is instead left theorising over alternative promotional techniques for Western charities.
Bibliography
1. Barthes, Roland. The Rustle of Language, trans. R. Howard. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989. Print.
2. Rusty Radiator. "About". Rustyradiator.com. Web. 26 March 2018.
3. Said, Edward. W. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1993. Print.
Contrapuntal reading is reading with an "awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts" (Said 51). It also means reading a text "with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England" (Said 66). With this in mind what follows is my own close contrapuntal reading of the SAIH Norway video.
The video starts with Thomas Newman-esque light piano music conjuring feelings of sadness, empathy and poignancy. A viewer used to this style of music and aware of its use in popular media immediately knows that what is coming will be either a charity appeal, upsetting images and story or a combination of these things. The average Western viewer prepares themselves for a window onto a world that is not their own (even if aspects of it may also hold true for them). The music and history of that use of music for the Western viewer signify that we are about to experience the other. Together with this music the viewer is presented with an establishing shot of a woman carrying a bucket on her head and a boy walking through a desolated landscape along with the caption 'Somewhere in Africa…' Here the video producers show their awareness of the charity appeal video tropes and execute them exactly as the Western viewer expects.
Not more than 15 seconds into the near 3 and a half minute video the discourse described above is rudely shattered as the woman falls, the boy starts laughing and an off screen Western voice shouts 'cut!' The Western viewer is jumped into another now familiar discourse which I call dupe awareness. This meta/post modern discourse, in its infancy disorientating but to those used to it comforting, is employed by the videos' creators to enact just that affect. The Western viewer is relieved to some extent that the sadness and horror they were expecting will no longer be taking place. Instead they are now amused and intrigued as to which direction the work will take and give a knowing wink to any fellow viewer they are with. The other, pre this technique, was almost only viewable to the modern television viewing Westerner through this style. The apparent awareness of this by SAIH Norway seemingly has caused them to deconstruct such with this video and their work in general through the Radi-Aid Awards (Rusty Radiator). It is my view however that, while there are good intentions and a drive for change behind the work, what we are actually seeing is the unintentional same othering happening given a post modern slant.
After the jump in the video to this alternative discourse we see it reinforced through a further establishing shot of the crew filming the woman and boy. We then discover that the boy is in fact an actor and has a Western, selfish, celebrity attitude. Again, the viewer winks to their companion with a wry smile.
Barthes concept of the reality effect in literature fits in nicely here: "[I]t is logical that literary realism should have been - give or take a few decades - contemporary with the regnum of "objective" history, to which must be added the contemporary development of techniques, of works, and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate the 'real': the photograph (immediate witness of 'what was here'), reportage, exhibitions of ancient objects (the success of the Tutankhamen show makes this quite clear), the tourism of monuments and historical sites." (Barthes 146) My argument is that the video authenticates the 'real' while thinking it is doing the opposite. The creators want to subvert the 'real' traditionally shown by unmasking the creative process it thinks typical charity appeal videos use. The viewer sees a constructed, cynical standpoint which may or may not be the reality behind the creation of these videos. What the video does above all else is support NAIH Norway's (Western) agenda and work. At the end of the video and, after it has reinforced the point it made in the first 30 seconds through the rest of its duration, we are left in the same situation as before the video started. The viewer does not care about the lives of the poor and starving in Africa but is instead left theorising over alternative promotional techniques for Western charities.
Bibliography
1. Barthes, Roland. The Rustle of Language, trans. R. Howard. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989. Print.
2. Rusty Radiator. "About". Rustyradiator.com. Web. 26 March 2018.
3. Said, Edward. W. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1993. Print.
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