People keep sending me this British short about checkpoints and the Palestinian experience reimagined. When people keep sending you something, that means it’s important.
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I’ve seen this, but it doesn’t convey anything of the real experience.
Crowd 500 people in there and hold them for hours with no access to a bathroom and you’ll have taken a small step in that direction.
If you bombard people with many images of suffering you may loose them, rather than win them.
People support causes based on emotions initially, and only later, and often to the lesser degree, on logic and legality, rationality and common sense.
So a good video is like a punch in the stomach to an unsuspecting audience: it should create righteous anger, which hopefully will be follow by enquiry into the facts. And frankly, anyone who will spend any time goggling “Israeli checkpoints”, will never advocate for Israel with a clear conscience.
There is a point when discomfort of seeing somebody’s stark suffering is so great, that we turn away.
Telling you that 16 members of my family died in Auschwitz – Oswiecim doesn’t have as much impact that saying that my 17 year old great aunt, whose picture in satin and pearls reminds me of Gloria Vanderbilt, died of hunger after being punished by having food rations withheld for some unknown misdemeanour against the camp’s rules (she didn’t die in starvation bunker – this was on man’s side of the camp, I believe).
We evolved to feel empathy to individuals, not crowds – this is why the video above works so well on uninitiated.
We evolved to feel empathy to individuals, not crowds – this is why the video above works so well on uninitiated.
Well said, couldn’t agree more.
If this is the new wave of Palestinian advocacy, then I’m all for it.
Pingback: Viral film forces us to imagine life for Palestinians | Antony Loewenstein
“When people keep sending you something, that means it’s important. ”
It really doesn’t.
Actually that depends on who sends it to you. For those among us who have a circle of friends consisting of intelligent, politically aware people, it arguably does mean something.
I hope Phil will realize that those emails he’s been getting, the ones urging him to do something about his tiny penis, are equally important.
Speaking from your own vast experience in that department, one assumes?
Why would he? (Provided, first of all, that he does not have a spam filter.) He was talking about something sent by people, after all.
I’m one of those who sent the link to Phil. I agree with potsherd that “it doesn’t convey anything of the real experience”, but I thought it was noteworthy that modish Brits were making such videos in the first place, and winning some sort of award for it. And I think that such elaborate efforts, however imperfect, deserve the encouragement needed to go even further.