KONY 2012: Fame Redefined
<![CDATA[[Editorial note: This post was written originally for UrbanFaith.com, which has a much bigger audience than this blog. But for the sake of immediacy, I decided to post this here first.]
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
— Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride.”
If you haven’t already seen it, San Diego-based not-for-profit organization advocacy group Invisible Children recently launched a video campaign called KONY 2012, designed to raise public awareness and attention toward their goal of seeing U.S. forces capture abductor and child-soldier-exploitationist Joseph Kony .
Now that the KONY 2012 video has already reached over 80 million views in a really short time, the campaign has entered the national conversation. As such, there is a commonwealth of informed voices coming out of the woodwork to shoot it down offer informed rebuttals to their strategy. (Here are several such examples, including two right here on UrbanFaith.)
Most of these criticisms are, rightfully, engaging the biggest questions concerning the issues of what is best for Uganda, the limits of awareness and advocacy work, and the role of NGOs in Central Africa in general, and how these interact with the larger economic and foreign policy interests of the U.S. government. These are some of the most important issues surrounding the KONY 2012 campaign, and should be debated fiercely.
But I have a much more fundamental issue with the campaign, and it’s with the word “famous.”
Taken from the Youtube page, here is IC’s own description of the KONY 2012 campaign:
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
Can you see the inherent contradiction there?
Now, more than ever, perception is reality. And in today’s hyper-saturated world of media, I’m not sure how possible it is to make Joseph Kony famous without inadvertantly celebrating him. When in the history of public activism have people ever rallied around a personified symbol of opposition without raising the profile of that person?
After all, there’s a reason why, if we go back to the obscenity controversies surrounding 2 Live Crew in the early 90s, Luke fans and anti-censorship activists never went around wearing T-shirts or putting posters with the images of former attorney and censorship zealot Jack Thompson. They never wanted to give him any more exposure than necessary. (And believe me, if there’s anything Jack Thompson wanted, it was more exposure.)
So even if, after painstaking research and deliberation, one were to decide that another military intervention to remove Joseph Kony would be in everyone’s best interests, it’s still a huge leap in logic to conclude that the best way to make that happen is by affixing posters and stickers to public structures with his name and/or image on them.
Because even if we ignore the potential social costs of such civil disobedience (going in at night at blanketing our cities with propaganda could be viewed as overly aggressive or even illegal depending on how and where you go about it), the question must be asked – is making Kony famous even a good idea?
It used to be that fame was desirable as a consequence of living a life of significance or achievement. You wanted to be famous for something. Curing cancer, winning the Super Bowl, writing the great American novel, et cetera. “Baby, remember my name,” right?
Over time it became clear that to be famous in the 21st century doesn’t require any particular skills or achievements. People like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian have made whole careers out of being famous for being famous — in their cases, being born into famous families. But now, with the KONY 2012 campaign, what we’re seeing is the term “famous” being used in a totally opposite way, to be famous for something really bad.
If only there were other words in the English language that could express this idea – oh wait, there are. Words like “infamous” and “notorious” do the job quite well. To paraphrase a scene from a favorite Sports Night episode, there’s a big difference between famous and infamous. One’s famous, the other’s infamous. That’s why they have those words.
That’s why this whole “make Kony famous” thing doesn’t sit well with me.
Considering how much Twitter has been incorporated into today’s political process, part of me wonders if the biggest reason why the KONY 2012 went viral so fast was because the name “Kony” makes for a great Twitter hashtag. I know he’s a terrible man and has been brutalizing children for decades, but still. It’s no secret that they deliberately chose an election year for this campaign, because it should be the kind of thing that politicians across the aisle should be able to agree on.
But what happens after 2012, especially if he doesn’t get caught?
I suspect he’ll become the new Che Guevara – just another polarizing, countercultural figure whose actual life will become distorted in order to fit the dominant political or social agenda of the day.
And not to pull a Jesus Juke, but every time I see or hear “make KONY famous” I keep thinking about the Chris Tomlin tune, “Famous One.” If Kony is our new standard for fame, then maybe Tomlin needs to record it again under the title, “Famous-For-All-The-Right-Reasons (And-None-Of-The-Wrong-Ones) One.”
Maybe that wouldn’t work on Twitter, but I’m a big guy – I could probably fit it on a XXL T-shirt.
Who’s with me?]]>