what the fuck?

Just when you thought it couldn't get any more bizarre...

I honestly don't know how to respond to this surreal piece of shite, it was only when I read the blurb that I realised it wasn't a spoof.

STOP RUSSELL.

Phony 2012

I usually dedicate my blog time to sharing and discussing cat videos on Youtube, but occasionally something like this ridiculous 'Invisible Children' nonsense flares up and irritates me so much that I feel the need to abandon my beloved feline friends for a while and write down all the things that bother me about our generation.

Let me start with the 'Kony 2012' video that’s been so widely plastered across every social media platform on the planet in the last couple of days that I expect even my terminally technophobic mother has seen it. If you haven't already witnessed the bizarre documentary film that everybody's talking about (which you definitely have) you can view it here: And I'm not posting it because I think it's 'beautiful' or 'provocative' or 'amazing,' but simply to support my point that underneath the squeaky clean production and hard-hitting Hollywood narrative lies a fundamentally troubling message about how the world should respond to Joseph Kony and the atrocities at work within the 'Lord's Resistance Army' in Uganda.

'Invisible Children,' an NGO set up to shed light on the little-known but terrifying reign of Joseph Kony, whose Organisation, the LRA, has wreaked havoc in Uganda for over 25 years through its method of abducting children and killing their families, enlisting the boys as soldiers and using the girls as sex slaves, has recently published this video entitled 'Kony 2012.' Needless to say, the video has gone viral and permeated the global public consciousness, raising awareness among millions of Kony's crimes in an attempt to 'make him famous.'

The abiding message of the video, and the obvious reality of the situation regarding the LRA, is that Kony has to go. That goes without saying. However, while the short film has been so consummately successful in making Kony a household name, many, myself included, remain unconviced about the integrity of the 'Invisible Children' initiative and have numerous questions about the overall approach taken by the NGO to combat the problem of Kony's reign of terror. It's hard to know where to start, but below are a few of the main reasons why 'Invisible Children,' and the video that seeks to propagate the initiative's intentions, has become a topic of such a contentious public debate, and why the video remains such a source of infuriation for so many:

Good Guy vs Bad Guy

I find it amazing that film-maker Jason Russell, through the manipulation of a narrative delivered by his 3 year old son Gavin, thought it appropriate to repeatedly address the issue of Kony's capture in terms of the age-old Hollywood notion of 'Good Guy vs Bad Guy.' Russell arrogantly includes footage of himself asking his son 'what do I do for a job?' to which Gavin replies 'you stop big bad guys from being mean.' I have a number of issues with this:

Firstly, the mere use of the heroes and villains terminology used throughout the duration of the video is patronising and reductive. It conjures up images of Bruce Willis in a sweat-drenched, blood stained wife-beater chasing the evil villain through the streets in order to avenge his hapless girlfriend and save the city from certain peril. While this image is a familiar one in movies, and thus makes the reality of conflict easier to swallow, it remains a reductive image and is completely inappropriate to Joseph Kony; a cruel and barbaric warlord who has (somehow) avoided capture for more than a quarter of a century and who credits rape, murder, mutilation and the abduction of tens of thousands of children among his achievements.

Secondly, Jason Russell, that's not your job, you are not Bruce Willis, you are a film-maker, and the assumption that you have somehow single-handedly stopped any kind of 'bad guy' from being 'mean' is both self-indulgent and false.

Thirdly, and perhaps most irritatingly, Russell feels the need to appropriate the story of Kony's regime through the eyes of a three year old child. And while it is undeniable that Gavin is a very endearing little boy (ahhh the endearing little boy tactic, I feel the only way to have executed this ploy to a greater effect would've been to enlist a young Macauly Culkin to play the part of Gavin), the fact remains that he is three, and there are limits to the depth and complexity with which he is able to understand the situation. I might have hoped that Jason Russell might wish to credit his audience with a little more political awareness than that which can be understood by a toddler.

Ultimately, at the heart of the 'good guy versus bad guy' paradigm lies the presumption that once the villain is dead, the people's suffering will end. It worries me that this is the mentality that seems to underpin the entire 'Invisible Children' campaign and, on watching Jason Russell's video, I was struck immediately by the omission of any kind of meaningful reflection on what plans the organisation had to follow up on Kony's capture. Does anyone even care? Or is it satisfaction enough to see the baddy brought down by the proverbial 'good guys?' (If you'd like to read an interesting interpretation of this aspect of the debate, written by a Ugandan man who's family has been directly affected by Kony's regime, this is definitely worth a read). The way I see it, it is not as simple as 'killing the bad guy,' and it is not the prerogative of Jason Russell or any other good-looking, white, heterosexual male to wade in and play the hero. And that leads me nicely on to my next point...

'Neo-liberal, do-good whiteness.'

Another all-too-familiar and widely infuriating image. The helpless black African whose only hope of salvation is through the intervention of the Heroic White Westerner. A prominent voice throughout the 'Invisible Children' debate is that of blogger and published writer Eric Ritskes. Ritskes reflects on the issue of 'Neo-liberal, do-good whiteness,' saying, 'The Invisible Children's narrative on Uganda is one that paints the people as victims, lacking agency, voice, will, or power. It calls upon an external cadre of American students to liberate them by removing the 'bad guy' who is causing their suffering. Well, this is a misrepresentation of reality on the ground.' (You can read the full article here)

This opinion is perpetuated by the fact that 'Invisible Children,' an organisation that purports to have Uganda's best interests at heart and which has launched a global campaign to face up to and demystify one of the country's foremost humanitarian crises, is led exclusively by white Americans, and that not one member of the film-makers behind the 'Kony 2012' video happens to be Ugandan. As is so often the case when foreign aid missions in Africa are broadcast, the abiding image of the African is one of poverty and helplessness, for as Ritskes says, 'the ideal African still lives in huts! They are exotic and poor.' What the documentary fails to display is that Ugandans are not completely lost without American assistance, and that, in fact, American military intervention has been historically detrimental to the success of foreign aid missions. Unsurprisingly, Jason Russell and the other film-makers behind 'Kony 2012' fails to mention that in 2008, the Ugandan army, with US assistance, launched an attack on the LRA that resulted in the death of hundreds of Congolese civilians. This is the danger of viral videos such as these. Yes, they succeed in raising awareness, but they also succeed in providing the impressionable messes with false or manipulated information. In response to those who turn around and say 'yes the video is flawed but at least people now know who Kony is,' I would like to ask the question, is it really better to spread a false and misleading message than to not spread a message at all?

It may sound cynical, but to me it seems as if the ubiquitous yet glaringly half-assed re-posting of ‘Kony 2012’ across Facebook, Twitter and the entire Blogosphere is as superficial, ingenuine and phony as the video itself. What shocks me is the sheer volume of intelligent and forward-thinking people I know who have contributed to this lacklustre media soup with no questions asked. I guess essentially, this type of Armchair Activism is testament to the power of social media to whip its participants in to a kind of virtual frenzy. It seems as if, provided any campaign is headed up by a good-looking American with straight white teeth and a cute kid, it is bound to elicit a widespread, sentimental response. After all, who could fail to be won over by political poster boy who looks like this:

The video starts with the slogan ‘nothing is more powerful than an idea.’ To me, this utterly sums up the fundamental flaws of the entire 'Invisible Children' initiative and the ways in which people have responded to the 'Kony 2012' video like obedient sheep, dutifully posting and re-posting it, without really having taken the time to scratch beneath the surface of its apparent message. It is the ‘idea’ of change that people so whole-heartedly latch on to. It is the entirely reductive ‘idea’ of killing the ‘bad guy’ that fuels the entire campaign. It is the ‘idea’ of re-posting, or re-blogging, or re-tweeting the video that enables people to pat themselves on the back and feel like they’ve ‘done their bit’ to help. It is the attractiveness of these very ideas that contributes to the colossal power of the video, but that does very little to address the realities of the situation or to offer any kind of meaningful answers about what Kony’s death will actually mean for the LRA and for Uganda. Essentially, 'Kony 2012' has transmitted across the world a superficially attractive idea, but has ultimately failed in detailing what 'Invisible Children' proposes to do to consummate this sensationalist witch-hunt.

This post thus far only forms the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the questions I have about the integrity of the 'Invisible Children' project. Go here to read about a multitude of other issues that various people have with Jason Russell and the commercial juggernaut that is 'Kony 2012.'

Lol