![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbot posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
poptimistsAt Maddie's suggestion, I'm posting Co-Ed School's "삐리뽐 빼리뽐 (Bbiribbom Bbaeribom)" as this week's problematic Korean video.
This presents the mentally ill as goofy and silly in kiddie-candy colors, so as potential objects of ridicule, I guess, though also as fun. So the positive side would be that, in playing crazy, the Co-Ed Schoolers get to be way goofy and silly and colorful and fun. My question here - and I don't know the answer - is: does stuff like this actually harm anyone? That is, does it help perpetuate attitudes that lead to bullying, to cuts in services, and so forth? I think that most people know that mental illness is actually sad, grim, dangerous. For example, one of my best friends in high school became a paranoid schizophrenic in his early twenties and several years later committed suicide. But that doesn't necessarily make me get all upset at a video in which stereotypically catatonic, obsessive inmates get to dance in bright colors. This video doesn't do right by his agony, but so what?
(And anyway, whether or not I get upset doesn't answer the question of whether anyone gets harmed.)
Think the song is a good one and I like the beat, though the singers are weak; typical anonymous Italodisco singers from 1985 could have given this more feeling. Fun is getting in the way of feeling, here. So this rendition is unfair to fun.
Co-Ed School's "Too Late" is a more gripping track and video, though again the singers don't give it what it needs.
This presents the mentally ill as goofy and silly in kiddie-candy colors, so as potential objects of ridicule, I guess, though also as fun. So the positive side would be that, in playing crazy, the Co-Ed Schoolers get to be way goofy and silly and colorful and fun. My question here - and I don't know the answer - is: does stuff like this actually harm anyone? That is, does it help perpetuate attitudes that lead to bullying, to cuts in services, and so forth? I think that most people know that mental illness is actually sad, grim, dangerous. For example, one of my best friends in high school became a paranoid schizophrenic in his early twenties and several years later committed suicide. But that doesn't necessarily make me get all upset at a video in which stereotypically catatonic, obsessive inmates get to dance in bright colors. This video doesn't do right by his agony, but so what?
(And anyway, whether or not I get upset doesn't answer the question of whether anyone gets harmed.)
Think the song is a good one and I like the beat, though the singers are weak; typical anonymous Italodisco singers from 1985 could have given this more feeling. Fun is getting in the way of feeling, here. So this rendition is unfair to fun.
Co-Ed School's "Too Late" is a more gripping track and video, though again the singers don't give it what it needs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 04:43 pm (UTC)I could well imagine someone else being personally upset that this trivializes the issue. Society needs more portrayal of mental health issues as health issues - that is, problems that in many cases can be managed without segregating the affected from society, that do not destroy or dehumanize the people affected, and that don't always end with suicide or murder - but I'm not sure candy-cane goofing is the right answer, either.
(My mental inputs on this: a number of discussions in Fandom regarding reducing ablist language - eg. using "crazy" or "retarded" to mean "illogical", using "lame" to mean "not good, embarrassing" - on the same principle that saying "gay" to mean "crappy" intrinsically upholds a value system in which "gay" = "bad". My personal value system jury is out on this one. I've also been working with the Canadian Mental Health Association, so I have a pretty good sense at this point of how the professionals would like to frame the issues involved.)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 12:52 pm (UTC)Do you have the time to listen to me whine
Date: 2011-02-11 06:13 pm (UTC)Lest we forget Green Day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTGr5t3MoY