In the class, I first time saw the video of KONY 2012, and actually that is the first time I get to know about this event. I am surprised that I am totally clueless that such a big thing is happening but I totally know nothing about it until it past.
So, as a person who first time know about the event, the class seem to be very negative about this. We talked about whether director should use his son in the video, whether he should be in front of camera so often? Whether the music they use is too exciting? Whether their action is meaningless? To be honest, although I understand why people will have negative feeling towards this, I still want to look at the whole thing more objectively and to be fair.
I remember when people saying they make it such a big deal but who is going to help the children in need in America? I know that the point is they question why the director pays so much attention, energy and time to help children far away from Africa, when there are many children in need in here. I think there is definitely some commercial issue, because compare with a event about saving poor kids around us, people feel more satisfied when it is about saving kids from Africa in some way. Moreover, what happened with those African kids is a big issue, it is a crime that destroy their humanity, kidnapped the children from parent, girls become sexual slave, and guys become their professional killing weapon, even kill their parents. This is big issue that needs help from other countries. Yes, every country has its own problems too, but can we ignore a problem this serious? This much make you think what they do is wrong? Does our country have problems mean we could not even help them? Pay attention on them?
I am not saying that the starving kids and other people need help in here isn’t important. What I think is just we need to respect people’s work when it is a positive thing regardless what their true intention is. We do not know if they are doing it for fame? For attention or something else, but honestly, I gave them credits for brought up the issue to people, spend time and energy doing event, make more people know, fight for getting help from U.S government in order to help the situation a little bit. Thinking to here, this may be the reason why I feel uncomfortable in class and hear so many negative comments toward this event’s video or its effectiveness or its purpose. It is because they actually spend time, energy and intention to help people who are not related to them, and it may not solve the issue directly, but it does help and I think we should appreciate that. For us, who sitting in the lecture room, we can’t help a little bit but watching this video of them, where is our position to criticize their work?
This questioning and doubting not only happened towards KONY 2012, basically every charity event I know, and especially when celebrities try to do charity. I suddenly felt what Susan Sontag mean in her article of “Pain of others” again, this is what we became, when we saw people doing charity, we won’t appreciate it, we thinking this as only a small effort which won’t help much. We won’t agree it, because we doubting their true purpose, thinking they just want fame or reputation or money. We forgot about the pain of others, we focus on the middleman who tries to connect us. So who is going to take an action and help others if they will never be appreciated?