Invisible Children: The Musical!

 Today is truly an odd day to say the least. For it has come to my attention that the infamous in some circles, famous in others charity group known as Invisible Children has a musical section of it's awareness campaign. And oh boy does it rock! (Are you detecting a hint of sarcasm there? You should be) In fact, they go beyond just music, they dive headfirst into the realm of musicals! And boy what great musicals they are! For example: this excellent example of charity money at work. You can really tell how much effort they put into it through the choreography, special effects (lasers!), suspension wires, costumes, dancers, singing, music, everything! When I saw the shirt with the poor little African kid on it, I just wanted to get up and go! To my bathroom. To vomit. Because this video is a disgrace to humanity. Dear god, this video sucked 7 minutes of my soul and they sent it flying into the void, never to be seen again. It's that bad. The mom, the jazzercise class, the kids, the acting, the singing, the Michael Jackson high-pitched screaming ripoff. Its all there. And it all sucks. Bad. This is what their money was going to back in 2006. Not feeding the little kid on the shirt, but paying to go out to Africa, paying to take a picture of a sad little African boy, paying to fly back to the US, paying to make a shirt with said photo, and paying for the musical that has the shirt in it. What a charity, ladies and gentlemen. I must say, that's exactly what I want when I donate my money to help African kids, crappy Glee-ripoffs.

 I think Charlie Brooker had a pretty good monologue on all this nonsense and whatnot, so I'll show that to you here:



Yes, those videos he references are real. And yes, they are as idiotic, mind numbing, and creepy as they seem. I think charities have just become one of those creepy things in life for me now, like morose old people and balloons floating by in the breeze. Oddly creepy and in no way should they ever be touched. And Invisible Children definitely falls under that category, as its misleading, simplistic messages lead young, idealistic minds astray from actual work being done in Africa. It has been said by Julie Owono that:

"The strength of these types of campaigns is that one can spread messages to millions of viewers at the speed of light. But its great weakness is that their messages tend to be reductive.
The Invisible Children campaign has fallen into this trap. The viral campaign portrays Ugandans - often referred to merely as "Africans" - needing to be saved by young Americans, whose overflowing humanity will carry the burden of a history they are not responsible for. It's understandable. Indeed, it seems easier to picture needy "Africans" than proactive ones - and surely sells more.
But times have changed, and this type of simplified and misleading message will now more than ever face the reactions of young and connected Ugandans, Kenyans, Congolese, Cameroonians, Ivorians, et cetera, who also see the Internet as a tool to spread their story. The Invisible Children team probably did not think that it would get such responses to a video that, while well-intentioned, had a stench of old-school paternalism."

Many bloggers, journalists, speakers, etc have come out against this campaign and how its sketchy in finance and purpose. In fact, despite the opinion pieces, the Prime Minister of Uganda has even come out to express his distaste with the campaign itself, although he does like the attention it's bringing to the plight of his people. He states "I extend the invitation not just to the 20 celebrities, but to you all - come and see Uganda for yourself - you will find a very different place to that portrayed by Invisible Children." Whoa. Are you saying that even Uganda doesn't agree with Invisible Children and their message in KONY2012? Who would've thought that? Oh, I don't know, anyone who looked into this thoroughly.

And then there's the whole naked breakdown debacle. Whats up with that? He breaks down because of all the attention hes getting. Both good and bad mind you,I particularly enjoyed an analysis I found on it, which related it to a breaking of his superman complex. But update on that, his wife reports that the doctors say he has had a brief reactive psychosis, which may take months to recover from properly. It's basically a mental breakdown from all the stress. His wife has also announced that they will be focusing on recovering, and to keep the focus on the cause and not on Russel himself. We'll see how that turns out though...