United Colors of Wtf?

I recently stumbled upon these ads by an American company named “United Colors of Benetton”.

 According to Benetton the ads are “symbolic images of reconciliation - with a touch of ironic hope and constructive provocation - to stimulate reflection on how politics, faith and ideas, even when they are divergent and mutually opposed, must still lead to dialogue and mediation."

So what is Benetton? Not being from the US, I had no idea and the ads, while they are certainly attention grabbing, don’t really tell you much. It seemed to me like a campaign that would be run by an organisation like Amnesty International or Greenpeace. With that being my line of thought, I was rather stunned when the Benetton website loaded and I discovered what they sell: clothing.

A bit of research revealed Benetton have a history of relying on this odd advertising technique of presenting shocking images sans anything relevant to their actual products.

The ads form part of a campaign for the unhate foundation launched by Benetton which claims to have a presence in the international community with the aim of spreading a message of tolerance, hope and peace. All of the ads bear Benetton's logo but many do not bear the unhate logo. Whether you like it or not, the tactic certainly garners attention and, when their ads hit the news, millions of dollars’ worth of free advertising. They even scored some attention from the Vatican: 

"We must express the firmest protest for this absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father, manipulated and exploited in a publicity campaign with commercial ends," he said. "This shows a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offence to the feelings of believers, a clear demonstration of how publicity can violate the basic rules of respect for people by attracting attention with provocation."

Not a particularly positive shout out from the Pope, but in advertising that hardly seems to matter.

This Film is not yet Rated

I just wanted to make a quick post about a documentary I watched recently called, This Film is not yet Rated. I was reminded of it in our recent ethics lecture when Bruce mentioned the restricted rating that was given to the ad about not throwing fuel on fires. It had a good ethical message, trying to show people the potential consequences of dangerous behaviour, yet it was restricted from reaching its audience.

This Film is not yet Rated focusses on the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) rating board. A number of film makers are interviewed in the documentary, discussing the disparity in ratings, the fact that simple homosexual intimacy will be given a harsher rating than heterosexual sex and that gratuitous violence seems to be more acceptable than sex in any form. 

On reflection, the film is highly relevant to the exercise we did in the ethics lecture to establish the difference between ethical issues and personal aesthetics. It seems the ratings board in the US is unable to disambiguate ethics from aesthetics. So, for example, if you have a film which depicts an intimate homosexual relationship with an overall message of respect and acceptance, you will receive a more restrictive rating than an action film with excessive violence which carries no ethically justifiable message. There is no room to consider the film within its ethical context to determine whether the contentious scenes are justifiable. This closed-mindedness places heavy restrictions on the creative freedom of film makers. If they are stuck with a restrictive rating their ability to promote their film and the audience they will be able to reach are both greatly reduced. 

An Interesting Ethical Dilemma

Talk of ethics in last week’s lecture reminded me of a case I looked at while studying criminology. A man had been staying in a private room in a hostel in Scotland for just under a year. On the day in question he had his door locked but two maids unlocked it with a master key to clean his room. When they opened the door they found him engaged in an intimate moment with a bicycle (if you want a less ambiguous picture, he had the seat removed and there was a lot of hip thrusting going on). The maids called the police, the man was arrested and charged with a breach of the peace, and he was later found guilty and sentenced to three years’ probation. Due to the nature of his crime he was also added to the sex offender list. 

Obviously most people would find what this guy was doing gross but is there anything intrinsically unethical about it? He was in a private room behind a closed and locked door. Was it perhaps more unethical of the maids to call the police after stumbling into the scene? Couldn’t they simply have shut the door and left him in peace? 

And how ethical were the actions of the presiding judge? The man’s placement on the sex offenders list carriers with it a great burden ofconsequences. Those on the list can be barred from certain activities, areas and forms of employment. They have to re-register each year and must inform the police of any travel intentions and if they relocate. Failure to keep the police updated is an offense which carries a prison term. Based on his sentence, the man will be on the list for 7 years. His details are recorded alongside violent offenders and those who pose a danger to small children, yet his “crime” was committed alone and he had no intention of even allowing anyone to be present. 

This case is an interesting example of how murky the area of ethics is and how important it is to separate your personal aesthetics from ethical considerations.

A Tale of Two Stories

My task was simple enough: find a true story and tell it. The hard part was choosing just one. I rifled through a mental rolodex of the adventurous and bizarre. There was my housemate who had a psychotic break and became convinced he was my cat; my friend who spent an evening tied to a panther in the South American jungle; the infamous Amsterdam trip; the skull I found in Aokigohara forest… an endless procession of possibilities.
  

Then I had an idea: what if instead of writing the story I filmed it? I’d gain experience with something new and be limited to a story I could capture on camera. Happily oblivious to the nightmare I was about to inflict on myself, I settled on the following tale.

Budh’s Story

In 1996, Budh and his dad were constructing a paintball field in bushland north of Gympie. Broke at the time, they were living in tents and surviving on baked beans and bananas. One foggy winter morning they awoke to gunshots and screaming from the only neighbouring house. Acting on instinct, Budh went to help, unwittingly embroiling himself in the strange saga of Bill Fox. 

Fox had been on the run since 1992 after shooting his ex-wife’s friend in the face while she was holding her baby. He evaded the cops using decoys, booby traps, an underground bunker and a series of bush hideouts. The chase continued until early 1996 when he was caught but released on bail. When his ex-wife rescinded the bail money, he went after her, armed with a shotgun and intent on revenge. Budh witnessed the shooting spree that ensued and got the survivors safely to hospital.

What Went Wrong

This story is intense and Budh is usually an incredible storyteller... but he’s terrified of the camera. I tried getting him used to it and even tried hiding it but nothing worked. He wouldn't look up, stumbled over words and played down the whole situation. It was nothing like the story he captivates people with over drinks.

While our setting fit the story, we were besieged by mosquitoes and had bushwalkers strolling thoughtlessly through our shot. There’s a limit to how many times you can ask someone to repeat a story, especially when they’re already uncomfortable; so, feeling I had failed as an interviewer, I packed it in.

After some self-pitying indulgence, I regrouped and targeted my second victim.

Dylan’s Story

Dylan kidnapped a man for the promise of $20,000. The catch was, the man paying the money was the one who wanted to be kidnapped. It was clear the guy was a bit nuts and Dylan suspected he might be planning to pull a shot gun on them (self-defence against kidnappers - the perfect excuse for murder). Deciding $20,000 and a crazy experience were well worth the risk, Dylan accepted the challenge and organised the crime with his girlfriend and three mates.

What went wrong

First my video camera ran out of battery. We ransacked the house but couldn’t find the charger. Dylan was already sketchy about having to go from the start again so I went with the only other option I had – my web cam. I knew the footage would be average but hoped the story would shine through and overcome it.

While Dylan was more comfortable on camera than Budh, he still wasn’t quite himself. In hindsight, I wish I’d had the camera to the side filming us in a conversational situation. This would’ve made Dyl more comfortable, allowing the story to flow more naturally.

Little did I know my biggest conundrum was yet to come. When I stopped filming, Dylan said: 

“Want to hear what really happened? No camera though, and you can’t tell anyone.” 

After what he told me off the record, the story I taped seemed altogether pointless. Tarantino would’ve been drooling. Dyl had never told anyone before and was so disturbed he swore he’d never speak of it again. He swore me to the same secrecy. So I got the story, I just can’t ethically share it. 

What To Do?

So there I was, a storyteller with two undertold stories, like a waiter with two chewy steaks. Do I present either? Neither? Then I had an epiphany – why not present both? Each story gets told, each failed attempt becomes a story in itself and you, friend, get to learn from my mistakes.

The Longest Infographic Ever

I really love the BBC. I have to admit though, it's mostly for their Science and Environment section. I love knowing, for example, that plants warn each other when under attack, that bees have been used to end the conflict between Elephants and African farmers and that flies behave the same way as humans do when they're drunk. I value knowing about that sort of stuff as much as I value knowing about current events, which is why I have it as my news feed over to your right there

Browsing through today, I found probably the longest infographic ever. The excessive length is because it is a to-scale representation of the space race which goes right to the outer reaches of our galaxy. It even gives you an estimation of how long you'd have to scroll to get to the edge of the known universe. What I really loved about it though was that it reminded me of an old favourite story and led me to discover something new and equally cool.

The old story had been lost and floating somewhere in my hippocampus but came fluttering back out when I saw the highest ever sky dive marked on the infographic. The guy who did it, Joe Kittinger, travelled up in a gondola attached to a high altitude balloon. The trip up took something like 7 hours and he reached 31 km above the surface of the Earth before jumping. Now Joe had been skydiving plenty of times and was used to feeling that massive rush of wind after jumping. But when he leapt from the gondola he felt nothing. It was like he was floating, suspended in the atmosphere. This was back in 1960 and it was an exploratory mission to see how far out into space a human being could go. Joe's head pounded with the realisation he had gone too far and wouldn't be able to get back down. He turned back towards the gondola but struggled to find it. Then, looking up, he saw it rapidly shooting away from him. Only then did he realise he was actually descending. His free fall lasted 4 minutes and 36 seconds and it wasn't until within the last minute that he felt the familiar upwards rushing wind. I'll let Joe fill you in on the rest himself:

Right next to Joe on the infographic I saw "lego-naut" marked out as having reached 24 km. Curiosity piqued, I flicked over to Google and found the following Youtube video: 

How cool is that? The students who uploaded it were all over the news and, since then, other people have been sending all sorts of random stuff up. 

The first person I told about it was completely unimpressed, couldn't see the point of it and then shot the whole thing down saying, "it didn't really get to space anyway". To me though, the point is that we have access to all this cool stuff. And those kids might not have been pioneers in the space race but they were pioneers for ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

Language Games

Language is pretty much fundamental to journalism yet it is, and always has been, highly contentious. In 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote of a future in which people are so bombarded with useless information that anything resembling the truth is drowned. 

In his novel, 1984 (published in 1949), George Orwell sketched a dystopian future in which language is designed to control the masses and preclude dissent. 

Images courtesy of Stuart McMillen

 Philosophers too have agonised over language. Ludwig Wittgenstein argued most (if not all) philosophical problems arise from the short-comings of our language and our failure to understand its logic. In, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he suggests that if we could amend our logic and our understanding and use of language, philosophical problems would dissolve. They wouldn’t be solved, they would dissolve – we would realise they were never truly problems to begin with. So we don’t so much gain wisdom as escape confusion.

Of course no-one has yet successfully dissolved the problems with language so the journalist’s primary tool remains an imperfect one. For better or worse it can be used to influence and control the audience’s way of thinking without them even realising it. In his book of the same title, Steven Poole refers to this phenomenon as “Unspeak”. When you encounter phrases like “intelligent design”, “ethnic cleansing”, “the war on terror”, “pro-choice”, or “pro-life” someone has put a lot of effort into getting that exact word combination to you. Far from being neutral, these words come pre-loaded with an unspoken but heavily biased argument. 

You’re in a pretty tough position if you wish to voice opposition to a war everyone accepts as “the war on terror”. Strictly speaking, to oppose such a war is to take sides with terror. The usual way of fighting this is to employ some unspeak of your own. In the early 1970s, “pro-abortionists” ditched their literal but unappealing moniker in favour of “pro-choice”. By 1976 anti-abortionists – who had been calling themselves the “right to life” movement – had constructed the reactionary epithet, “pro-life”. These two terms have been framing the debate ever since, thrusting people into an ethical dilemma before they’ve even had a chance to be informed on the issue – which do you value greater, life or choice? Life is fundamental but choice denotes freedom and what kind of life can we have without freedom? 

As a journalist, it is very easy to be drawn into using these words and unwittingly passing on the manipulation to a wider audience. How many articles do you see reporting on “ethnic cleansing”, “the war on terror”, “operation Iraqi freedom” and other ethically crowded phrases? Then there’s always the potential for you to take some subversive initiative and start manipulating language yourself. Or you could always try to fight back and refuse to use language in this way. Whatever your choice, it requires a level of hyper-attentiveness to recognise these phrases rather than just consuming them. It seems quite fitting to end with the words of Wittgenstein:

"Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself."

Blog is such an ugly word

I’ve never liked the word blog. It sounds like some weird, gross medical condition you’d feel embarrassed to tell people about. 

(Image by: Krystle Richardson)

Aesthetics aside, there’s no denying blogs, and social media in general, have fundamentally changed journalism. What was once a predominantly one way system is now a collaborative enterprise; and the immediacy of the web means the public can have their say without having to sit down and bash out a letter to the editor. While there are obvious benefits to the increased access journalists now have to their audience (and vice versa), you have to wonder how it affects the quality of what’s being spread. The same immediacy which is so alluring can also be quite worrying. Blog posts don’t have to be approved by an editor and there is rarely any standard to be met for comments to be publically visible. Not that I’m advocating censorship but people are frighteningly carefree about posting death threats these days. Those posting these threats may know they’re idle but that doesn’t exactly provide peace of mind for the people who have been targeted (including journalists and even a 6 year-old).  

Social media driven, reciprocal journalism is still quite new though. Blogs only really took off within the last decade and facebook was only made fully available to the public in 2006, the same year twitter was launched. Each wave of new journalists will, hopefully, have a clearer view of the problems and be able to find ways to absorb and work around them. 

In the end, whether you’re a blogophile or blogophobe, there’s no fighting the massive online tide (unless you want to start taking Chuck Palahniuk novels a little too seriously and get all anarchistic). And even though technology has changed the game, the words of Charles Darwin still apply:

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”