Good point…that context perhaps makes that one line a little more justifiable.
However, this song is still highly problematic. The title alone, “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, is enough to turn one’s stomach. When you’re talking about a region that has great religious diversity, the potential implication of these lyrics, that a knowledge of Christmas is essential to ones well-being, is indeed condescending.
Bono didn’t write the lyrics, its true that it was Bob Geldoff. But since these two have basically become partners in philanthropy efforts, and since this moment in a way marks the beginning of Bono’s involvement in problematic philanthropy efforts, I feel the connection is worthwhile.
Bono’s line in this song is particularly self-righteous. He screams, with a kind of forced agony, “But tonight thank God, its them, instead of you.” This kind of guilt-tripping, especially coming from a millionaire, is pretty absurd.
Also, although previous comments (in another thread) have criticized this campaign for using such a dated video, Bono was a part of the more recent BAND AID 20, which I’ve added to the media section but which you can also view here
In the contemporary version, the “rivers” line persists, and Bono still croons his condemnation of everyone who’s not starving in Africa. If time has revealed that the original lyrics had major flaws, they have made no effort to make them right, although they have added a rap line so they’re apparently concerned somewhat about fitting in with the times.
The other issue that persists in the BAND AID 20 version, is the image of a monolithic, disempowered, depressed Africa, which I’ve discussed elsewhere in this campaign. From what I hear there’s been moments like the one in this video at U2 concerts. Showing these kinds of images behind at an arena rock show just strikes me as fundamentally wrong. The image in this particular video is just in poor taste…when they cut from the starving person to the smiling person, and then all the rockers go from somber/sad to rocking out, well isn’t that just the feel-good moment of the century?
Picking on the aesthetics of this video is too easy, what we should really be talking about is the effect these kind of images have. In my opinion these kinds of images perpetuate an idea that Africa is helpless and will only persist on foreign AID. Foreign AID can play a key role but we need to be focusing on developing civil society around the assets African nations have. A sustainable solution to the fight against AIDS involves self-empowered communities.
There’s not been much discussion on this point…& I’d love to hear some other opinions. This is probably the most complex issue related to this campaign, but its important that this discussion get hashed out so that future philanthropy efforts can learn lessons from Bono’s efforts – be they good or bad.
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