Yep. We'll respect them in the morning.

And here’s the spoof ad:

KONY 2012

Perhaps the best way to understand the multiple and contested ways in which the video has been, and will be, interpreted, and why it’s had the tremendous impact it has, is by the juxtaposition of three related video scenes. The first is from Kony 2012 itself, the second a video response by a supporter of the movement, and the third, amateur news footage shot serendipitously on the streets of San Diego.

First, a clip featuring Jason Russell, an energetic, slim man who typifies the blonde Californian look, interviewing his young, toddler son (introduced, revealingly, as “This is my son Gavin. And just like his dad, he likes being in movies.”). Gavin is also blonde, and dressed in a black and red striped jersey. “What do I do for a job?” Russell asks Gavin. “You stop the bad guys from being mean”. And, “Who are the bad guys?” ask Russell. Gavin thinks about it. “Um… Star Wars people!”

Secondly, a clip from a video made by former porn actress, Bree Olsen. She’s also famous for being one of actor Charlie Sheen’s two “goddesses” who lived with him during his infamous meltdown that got him fired from the television show Two and a Half Men.

The video shows Olson writhing in a variety of provocative poses on a beach and in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, and perched on rocks in a skimpy dress – all juxtaposed with shots of mutilated victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The most horrifyingly inappropriate image is of Olson posed sexily in a bikini in the mud. There’s a close-up of her face, lips parted and painted red. She pouts at the camera in approved porn star style. There’s a smear of mud on her cheek. We cut from this to a close up of a child whose nose and ears have been hacked off, and lips mutilated. Apparently, we are supposed to make a link between Olson’s beauty being smeared by the streak of mud, and this child being tortured.

Bree Olson for Kony 2012

The third clip is from a video shot by a passerby. It shows Jason Russell, naked, prancing manically up and down a street in San Diego, and pounding his hands on the pavement. He swears, and rants about the devil, the Apple iPhone, and its digital assistant, Siri. Russell’s wife, Danica (who appears in Kony 2012, giving birth to their son Gavin), released a statement saying that “The preliminary diagnosis he received is called brief reactive psychosis, an acute state brought on by extreme exhaustion, stress and dehydration. Though new to us, the doctors say this is a common experience given the great mental, emotional and physical shock his body has gone through in these last two weeks.”

The first example above, of Russell’s son Gavin equating the Lord’s Resistance Army with the villains from the movie Star Wars, points directly at the mechanism around which Invisible Children is mobilising. It’s the classic tale of good versus evil, of identifiable baddies and unquestionable goodies, of superheroes rushing to the rescue. It’s the same impulse that led to the christening of the 2003 invasion of Iraq as “Operation Iraqi Liberation”. Kony 2012 attempts to configure its supporters, and potential supporters, as fighters for a simple justice, a comprehensible justice. This is one of the ways they’ve harnessed the inherent power of social media, that impulse that people on the networks have to share, and to share in, communal endeavour without nuance.

An early Invisible Children claim of success, made in a self-congratulatory section of the Kony 2012 video, was convincing Barack Obama and the U.S government to send 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to Uganda to help regional forces, namely Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, capture or kill Joseph Kony and his senior leaders. “After eight years of work,” Russell tells us, “The government finally heard us.”

Jason Russell's naked meltdown.

Detractors of U.S involvement have criticised it on grounds that it provides military assistance to countries, like Uganda and South Sudan, who have themselves used children as soldiers. Jo Becker, child rights advocate at Human Rights Watch, points out that “Countries that keep using child soldiers aren’t going to get serious about ending the practice until they see the US is serious about withholding the money…. These military aid waivers show a lack of leadership and a disregard for US law.”

The second video clip cited above, featuring porn star Bree Olson, can be seen, on one level, as a gross exploitation of a cause to garner personal publicity. But it’s also a (perhaps unwitting) deconstruction of some of the key elements of the Kony 2012 campaign. At one point, the pneumatic Olson tells us that “Right now, you’re watching a video of me outdoors in California, interspersed with pictures of the effect Joseph Kony had on the people of Uganda. I put the two together because I know a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. The Kony 2012 documentary runs on the same principle. It’s nice packaging on something that wouldn’t be an inherently fascinating topic to that many people otherwise.”

It is, of course, a grotesquerie worthy of Antonin Artaud, an absurdity worthy of Thomas Pynchon, this mashup of soft porn and hard tragedy. It does, however, highlight – perhaps unwittingly – the pleasure that Jason Russell evinces in doing good. It also underlines the disquieting contention made by both Russell and Olson – that the world, or America, to use the elision they sometimes fall into, cannot feel empathy unless they’re entertained.

This isn’t the first time Russell has put forward this idea. In a bizarre 2006 Invisible Children dance video, which tells the tale of Russell’s attempts to get cynical schoolchildren interested in the cause, Russell sings “We’re on a mission to put Uganda inside your mind. It needs attention and a dance to make it sparkle and shine.” He also does some remarkably twee ninja dance moves, which are guaranteed to make any young person instantly hostile. Do yourself a favour and watch the video.

Read the entire essay  “Kony 2012: Taking a closer look at the social media sensation“.

Coney 2012. Although spelt Kony 2012.

So when DJ Fresh got a tweet that said (I paraphrase unfortunately, because I’ve lost the actual tweet) “I love you Fresh! I’m male, but don’t worry, I’m not homo”, his response was something along these lines: “Thanks. And whether you’re homosexual or not wouldn’t actually matter.”

When Nonhle gets this tweet from a woman: “No homo but Ur so sexy & beautiful,love you a lot,your a true Insipiration of beauty”, her response is simply “Thank u”. Okay, so it’s not the job of a celebrity to try and correct their fans, I guess. So we’re not judging Nonhle here for her lapse. I AM judging DJ Fresh though, and he comes out of it as a shining example of how celebrities can be a force for good, not just moneymaking monsters.

Some other Nonhle tweets, alas, don’t show her in a particularly good light when it comes to treading sensitively around gender politics..

Here are some tweets I used yesterday in a column called “Jesus, Smurfs and Nonhle Thema“.

The Tweetings of Nonhle
- Guyz that keep hating on me. As a GIRL need a DICK up their asses Full stop…faggots……

- Im your JESUS…just Deal with it..and keep it moving…ha ha ha IM TOOOO POWERFUL

- Do u know your dad  since your mother was a HOE. And was also rapped ha ha ha

- Im sure youre sooo ugly cos your mom tried to abort your fucked up ass….but gaddd damm u alive but UGLY and DIRTY as as shit

- Im sure SEAN PAGEs mother was rapped when she made his UGLY DUMB Ass…nigga looks like a RAPED rapper

- Aaawwwwww a NIGHT SHIFT thats how nigga was made…ha ha ha thst why he will neva marry. Cos his dick was also sucked by his mother

- Nice RT @Attenuater: @NonhleThema am your servant and you are my jesus! I worship your holy name my Smurfette! *bows*

- Ha ha boo Never i even lick my own ass i LoVE me RT @Sibunzi: @NonhleThema you keep on saying the same shit don’t u get bored of urself?

- How cool im dead….Thank u RT @TerisaJ: @NonhleThema one of the beatles claimed they were more famous than God! … http://m.tmi.me/lgPch

- Im making it rain NOW…im your GOD soo sit back and watch me do my magic….

- I make rappers angry an curse me out for PR LOL im the ish RT @MrPink47: @NonhleThema jesus performed miracles,so what can u do ???

All very amusing, but a decided contrast to the approach of DJ Fresh. (Oh, and if you have your own favourite Nonhle tweet, please put it on the comments section).

Visit Nonhle’s website.

Suddenly, at exactly 12 midnight geek time last night, all ads switched over to this:

Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. I guess it’s inflation linked. Or maybe, miraculously, the idiots who design these ads finally realised that nobody gets a prize for being the visitor before the millionth visitor.

For example, this cardboard Tintin rocket ship. How long is this going to remain amusing?

Tintin Rocket Ship

And these cool cow cufflinks, from the fantastically iconoclastic No Brand store. Cool, sure – but I have no shirts that take cufflinks. I just liked the little leather case. Argentina – they use all of the cow.

No Brand cufflink packaging.

Cows on your sleeve

And then a bunch of silly things, like a Che Guevara fridge magnet set (to go with my Michelle Obama one) and the complete Beatles albums fridge magnets. Yep, pretty useless too.

The revolution will be magnetised

The Fridge Four

More junk, without rhyme (especially the harmonica, since I can’t play it) or reason.

Genuine Argentinian Chinese harmonica

@Swimlittlefish dolls

And dvds I might as well have bought on iTunes

You REALLY need to own these. I guess.

I also bought some famous Argentinian Dulce de Leche. Of course. But we don’t need a picture of that. If you haven’t eaten it before, it’s the sweetest thing you’ll ever eat.

]]> http://chrisroper.co.za/2010/11/07/bought-in-buenos-aires/feed/ 2 http://chrisroper.co.za/2010/09/29/the-up-assignment/ http://chrisroper.co.za/2010/09/29/the-up-assignment/#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 06:36:36 +0000 Chris http://chrisroper.co.za/?p=3046 Hello, Potential People of the Media Tribunal

This is your assignment. It has no specified length – that’s called freedom, they tell me, and it’s your burden.

It has a due date – which I’ve forgotten, so ask Pippa.

Making online news happen:
Choose a topical news feature article, and put together a plan for a social media and multimedia package that will add value. Explain how it adds value, and – crucially – what that value is.
Your answer must consist of words, links and references. Feel free to publish it to your blog and send me a link. Paper will do too.

If you have any questions, mail me.

Go wild.

Chris

I’m not sure how they cut out the non-black attendees from their records. I don’t remember tickets being marked according to race. Maybe all the whities, Indians and others were there on freebies. And how do they know they were middle-class? Because they can drink wine without talking about someone’s mother’s genitalia? I’ve known quite a few low class wine drinkers in my time, and you couldn’t really tell the difference that easily.

Anyway, nitpicking aside, I really enjoyed the night I was in attendance. And I remembered that I’d once written a newsletter for an online wine company, about the difference between wine connoisseurs and just plain wine drinkers. And it occurred to me that not much has changed. This is no reflection on the Soweto Wine Festival, which was a buzzing, happy mix of both those groups, and the crossover types too. But it does give a little hope to those of us who want to have fun drinking wine without necessarily becoming competitive quaffers.

Wandering the very well supplied booths at the Soweto Festival with a video crew (pictured on the right because I can’t be bothered to go and find an actual picture of the actual wine), I realised that there are two ways to drink wine. Well, three ways if you count glugging, which I don’t think we should, not if we want to get to the end of this column. The first way is knowledgeably, with all the terms on the tip of your finely educated tongue, and with a vast body of experience that you bring to bear on the wine at hand. Or at mouth, whatever the right phrase is.

The second way is stylistically, where you don’t really know much about wine, but you know what people like. So, not to put too fine a point on it, you fake it. This isn’t as nefarious a deed as it sounds. Let me explain it this way. You know that social soccer club you joined when you became too old to play serious sport?  Well, a bunch of  people who don’t know much about wine, sitting around a dinner table and sipping whatever bottle was recommended to them, are very much like that soccer club.

How, you ask? Well, your buddies are always complimenting you on what a fine game you’ve played, and every time you try something fancy with the ball, they step back and admire you instead of just kicking you in the shins. That’s what it’s like drinking wine with people who don’t know much about wine. Basically, it’s a support group for wine lovers. Every time someone says something profoundly stupid, like “This tastes rather of the inside of a gym. Very okey,” you nod approvingly.

And people who don’t know much about wine are the true wine lovers, I’m afraid, not the people who are connoisseurs, and who know everything there is to know about fine wine. That’s not love, that’s just education. True love is mysterious, and the object of your love is equally mystifying. It’s more a spiritual transaction than a vinuous one.

That’s what was so much fun about the Soweto Wine Festival, or at least on the night I was there. Everyone, organisers, growers, punters and passersby, were all entirely on the side of wine, rather than on the side of wine connoisseurs. So good work to them, and I’m sure they’ve opened up a few more people’s palates, minds and wallets to the magic that is wine. Just maybe go a little easier on the racial classification next time. Or we’ll start thinking you’ve created an upgraded dop system.

(A third – the theoretical bit -  of this column is lifted from something I wrote about 4 years ago, although I can’t remember what publication it was – nothing to be ashamed of, it’s called recycling, and it’s environmentally friendly.)
Tweet

There’s only one official reading for this class, and it’s the text of the Hugh Cudlipp lecture, given this year by the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger. It’s entitled “Does journalism exist.”

Here are three salient bits.

Oh, and guest lecturer is Mail & Guardian Managing Editor Verashni Pillay, follow her on Twitter @verashni and read some of her columns here.

African Media Chiefs to Discuss Sustainable Business Models at Annual Summit

JOHANNESBURG, September 2 – Leading African media executives are preparing to meet in Tanzaniafrom 26-29 September for the 2010 edition of the Africa Media Leadership Conference (AMLC). This year’s summit will focus on identifying and developing “Sustainable Media Business Models in the Digital Age”.

The AMLC series – now in its ninth year – is the foremost pan-African gathering of senior media professionals, and the gathering represents a key opportunity for Africa’s most influential media leaders to discuss strategic, operational and other challenges in a fast and constantly changing media landscape.

A shot of the decapitated statue of Nkrumah in Ghana, where last year's AMLC conference was held.

Since its inception in 2002, the meetings have developed into an annual high-level forum for strategy formulation, networking and sharing by senior executives of print, broadcast, online and converged media on the African continent.

The conference is co-hosted by Rhodes University’s Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership (SPI) and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), and was convened to promote high-level interaction among Africa’s media chiefs.

“This year we switch focus from a broad look at understanding and doing digital media in Africa to specifics of what works and what does not work under African conditions,” said SPI Director Francis Mdlongwa.

Frank Windeck, the director of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung’s Sub-Sahara Africa Media Programme, the sponsor of the AMLC series, said: “These meetings provide Africa’s top media people with a unique opportunity to network at the highest level, debating  key industry challenges, while seeking practical solutions by examining case studies drawn from Africa.”

The conference meets annually in an African country, and past AMLC summits have debated timely topics such as “Managing Media in a Recession” (Mauritius, 2002); “South Meets East: Strategic Challenges for African Media” (Nairobi, Kenya, 2006); and “Learning  from the Future: Africa’s Media Map in 2029” (Accra, Ghana, 2009).

Issued by:

SPI Director Francis Mdlongwa (email: f.mdlongwa@ru.ac.za; mobile phone +27-(0) 83-629-2312; office phone +27-(0) 46-603-8781; fax  +27-(0) 46-622-9591)

KAS Director Media Programme for Sub-Sahara Africa Frank Windeck (email: Frank.Windeck@kas.de;  office phone +27-(0) 11-214-2900)