Thursday, March 8, 2012

Invisible Children

A couple of people have sent me links to the invisible children video that seems to be all over the place right now. Like everybody with a spark of humanity I suppose, I watched the film, was moved by it in an unthinking sort of way, reacted to it automatically and posted the link on facebook even. But I must admit as always it didn’t take me long to start having some niggles. There’s something wrong with my swallowing mechanism because things always just get stuck half-way down especially as I am very wary of anything with an overly glossy, refined format and especially if it comes out of the USA and especially when  lots of dollars and merchandising are involved. So as usual I was soon  hunting the internet to find out more information. I wish I hadn’t. Like everybody else I’d just like to click a mouse, buy a T-shirt and stop these atrocities. Of course I want the LRA and Joseph Kony wiped from the face of the earth, of course I don’t want kids being abducted for nefarious purposes BUT this all smells a bit fishy to me. Where’s the plan? Exactly what are we getting involved with? Having doubts of course makes me feel heartless, a killjoy. But reading the comments on the subject on facebook it just seems like a bunch of mostly ignorant over-privileged white kids doing the usual armchair activism. I doubt if very many of them have bothered to try to find out just how real the Ugandan reality is.  I tried and there’s not a lot of information about. Even IC itself is not providing background information. Why? But what makes me most suspicious is the total lack of Ugandans behind this scheme. I want to know what the people of Uganda think about this. Do THEY want this?  Why are there no Ugandans speaking out, why no Ugandans on the film? Is it just an online club for white activists, making their conscience better by clicking a mouse or is there a real possibility of changing something for the better? Is not the Ugandan situation a tad more complex than simply eliminating one man? I don’t know. So for the moment I’m only supporting the initiative with my mouse and not with my money. I don’t want to think of myself as a heartless cynic and half of me thinks what harm can it do? But the other half says but that’s just it, what harm could such an initiative do? What repercussions could this trigger? I don’t know enough and nobody in IC is filling in the background.
Usually when high-profile movements hit the world other deserving people get left behind. People love glamour not mundanity. Sure you have to start somewhere and I really hope this is genuine and useful and it would sure as hell be a fantastic thing if FB and the internet had this much power to really change things as it could maybe start something epic, but it just doesn’t convince me. I want hard facts, not emotive phrases like this morning’s, “...[we’re] ready to handle all the love you’ve been sending...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I posted about this a while back and I got the nigglies,too about a lot of things.

A friend on FB mentioned that she knew of people coming in from Uganda saying that kony, had been killed a couple of years ago and hadn't been in Uganda for a long time. So, why the film?? In fact, the Ugandan people disagree with Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children, who last month was allegedly vandalised cars and made sexual gestures while wearing his birthday suit in passing traffic. Hmm!