We’ve all had the experience of falling into the lives of lovable characters and scintillating drama.
Personally, my addiction to the Vampire
Diaries and Scandal has me hiding
away from friends, bars and daylight for days at a time. We all garner that bit
of shame after a Netflix-binge, crouching away into dusky corners like a dieter
with brownie still smeared across our faces. We know it’s not the best use of
our time, not enriching, not meaningful;
but slap me stupid, it’s addictive.
Which begs the questions: what if it could be a good use of
our time? Enriching? Even meaningful?
In 1969, Miguel Sabido noticed just this. In Peru, Simplemente Maria captured the hearts of
viewers nationally. When Maria, the star of the soap opera, went to literacy
classes, enrollment soared across the country. When she got married, more than
10,000 gifts arrived at the Church where it happened. Sabido noticed the power
of this soap opera to use a popular, entertaining medium to create a positive
cultural change, and thus Entertainment-Education was born. And 45 years later,
PCI Media Impact (a non-profit specializing in international communications for
social change) is utilizing it to change the world.
Entertainment-Education is about 70% entertainment, 30%
education. The order is important- generally speaking, entertainment-education
initiatives aim to create interesting plots, dynamic characters and dramatic
twists, often focusing on these aspects long before introducing any sort of ‘message’.
Nobody wants to be preached to, especially when receiving their dose of good
old-fashioned dramatic fantasy.
While there are many programs internationally, and some in
the US, that are specifically structured to do this, there are soap operas and
dramas that do raise questions about social norms without an overt intention to
do so, and that is what makes them effective.
Take HBO’s The
Newsroom. Driven by complex interactions among a complicated boss, a quirky
twenty-something, and awkward incestuous interoffice dynamics, this drama has
all the makings of a good story. But it also addresses serious issues surrounding
modern media and the media’s role in confronting the errors of our policies and
politicians. It raises real and dynamic discourse surrounding the
responsibility of media to disseminate information that is contextualized, aware
of its bias and ultimately responsible to its audience.
The Newsroom plays
an integral role in shifting the narrative by encouraging its viewers to
question the legitimacy of our media outlets. The show also demonstrates how the responsibility of these
organizations falls on us, their audience, affecting our opinion, shaping our democracy
and sometimes even fueling conflict itself.
Most shows have some element of social discourse – the
foundation for real social change; without it, the storylines would not be
engaging and relatable. Shows like the
Newsroom are well thought out (Aaron Sorkin, you genius, you) and present intentional
commentary catered towards an intelligently-engaged audience, and some do not
(although I’d argue that the Vampire Diaries has a pointed message that
high-schoolers are actually blood sucking demons who probably won’t make it
past the age of eighteen). Then there are the shows that are specifically
catered on altering social norms, and those are the ones changing the world,
one episode at a time.
One such is the telenovela Mucho Corazon, or A Lot of
Heart, produced by PCI Media Impact, together with the State Government of
Chiapas, Mexico and more than 25 partners. The show reached over ten million viewers in Chiapas and
across Latin America. This soap opera, which was written by two prominent
Mexican writers with significant experience scriptwriting for telenovelas,
focused on the story of Maruch, a young indigenous woman living in a rural
community. Throughout the episodic drama, Maruch is faced with issues of
harassment, corruption, racial and gender discrimination, lack of opportunity due to social class, an absent mother and an alcoholic
father.
This show was wildly popular- so much so that it is still being
rebroadcasted by 23 television stations across Latin America and by two
separate stations in the U.S. that cater to Mexican-Americans. The focus on character, story line and
dramatic engagement led individuals to identify with the characters and
scenarios in this show, forgetting
that they were actually learning anything in the process.
The impact? Apart from a delicious pleasure at the characters’
triumphs and tribulations (which prompts hurling things at the television and
writhing on the couch), 74.2% viewers were concerned with the rampant rates of
violence against women, versus 55.7% of non-viewers, not to mention significant
discrepancies between viewers and non-viewers in terms of the level of awareness
about indigenous discrimination and girls’ education.
And it all started with a television show. Indeed, one of the best mediums for change has
already crept into our households and the households of billions of people
around the world in the form of a box (albeit, an ever-thinning box).
But as we all know, serial dramas aren’t the only way we
connect (and space out).
Music is an influential medium (I can still recall every
word of Baby One More Time from
elementary school), and utilized in a conscious way, it can be a powerful
mechanism for change. It is unique in that it’s a cultural phenomenon that has
the ability to transcend the boundaries of cultures. Nobody forgets Aretha
Franklin’s Respect and MJ’s Thriller. Music has been changing
opinion, emotion and drug use for centuries. And there’s plenty of it telling
us great things.
There’s also a lot telling us to gyrate.
Personally, I prefer the woman-power music (like Miranda
Lambert’s Gunpowder and Lead, where
she tells the story of waiting for her abusive lover with a shotgun), but the
other edge of that violence and sex -addled sword (and there’s plenty of it) is
prominently featured in popular music (thank you, Pitbull and Ke$ha: “I have
'em like Miley Cyrus, clothes off, Twerking in their bras and thongs, timber
Face down, booty up, timber”). And music has become a sword- messages commonly focus
on violence, sex and degradation, but we all like to twerk to it so we don’t bother
to comment.
Alas, there is another way. Lady Gaga’s Born this Way is a good example of promoting self-confidence. Every
country song ever has a lyric about Jesus, being neighborly, or loving America
(see Tim McGraw’s Southern Voice for
all three). And there are those that deliver social commentary for sure (Black
Eyed Peas’ Where is the love?).
Enter the coolest hipco star to grace modern music, Takun J
– a Liberian rapper who, in partnership with PCI Media Impact, UNICEF, THINK
(Liberia) and more than ten partners, has recently released a music video of
his hit song, Song for Hawa, which
tells the story of a Liberian girl who was a victim of sexual assault.
Rape is a virtual epidemic in Liberia, with statistics
ranging from 60-80% of women victims of sexual violence, including rape, in the
nation. With almost four million people, the number of women assaulted is
astounding. To address this issue, Takun J has used his fame as Liberia’s most
prominent rapper to propagate anti-rape and gender equality messages.
Through his music, Takun J won “Best Hip Co Artist of the
Year” by the Liberian Entertainment Awards and is encouraging girls to get
their stories out, simultaneously discouraging sexual assault and de-stigmatizing
its victims. Indeed, his popularity has been rising all the way to the policy
level, where he was named “Anti-Rape Ambassador” by Liberia’s Ministry of
Gender and Development.
The Vampire Diaries
and Timber have their appeal- they
are fun distractions that allow us to escape into a different world (and after
a long day, I for one have no desire to think). But through the use of
Entertainment-Education, we can get the benefits of these campaigns how we want
to: with our asses stapled to the couch and our brains on slow-mo.
And if that’s the case, then the only question left is this:
what change in the world do you want to see, and what time is it on?
