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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/joseph-kony-adventure-show-uganda
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| Joseph Kony - the adventure show | Joseph Kony - the adventure show |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Another case of Please Stop This Now. After Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign to stop Joseph Kony's violence waned and flamed out, a new hero has finally arrived to save us from the warlord. Journalist, author of the book The World's Most Dangerous Places and rugged man's man Robert Pelton, has taken it upon himself to find Kony – with your (financial) support. | Another case of Please Stop This Now. After Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign to stop Joseph Kony's violence waned and flamed out, a new hero has finally arrived to save us from the warlord. Journalist, author of the book The World's Most Dangerous Places and rugged man's man Robert Pelton, has taken it upon himself to find Kony – with your (financial) support. |
| Pelton is raising money on a crowd-sourcing platform for Dangerous, a "multi-media real world participatory platform" that seeks to not only deliver excitement to audiences – but also to deliver solutions! And Pelton will make our journey entertaining, wandering into dangerous places on simple barges, and walking all alone through picturesque rivers framed by jungle ferns (despite the armies of camera, luggage, and security personnel accompanying him), as the promotional video – with its attendant stereotypes of Africa/Third World Jungle-Gone-Wrong – demonstrates. | Pelton is raising money on a crowd-sourcing platform for Dangerous, a "multi-media real world participatory platform" that seeks to not only deliver excitement to audiences – but also to deliver solutions! And Pelton will make our journey entertaining, wandering into dangerous places on simple barges, and walking all alone through picturesque rivers framed by jungle ferns (despite the armies of camera, luggage, and security personnel accompanying him), as the promotional video – with its attendant stereotypes of Africa/Third World Jungle-Gone-Wrong – demonstrates. |
| Promotional video for Expedition Kony on Vimeo. | Promotional video for Expedition Kony on Vimeo. |
| The concept is as simple as ordering take-out: pick your adventure from the convenience of your home by giving money and telling Pelton where to go and what to do, and Pelton and his team will "deliver the product". He describes it as a "tool for moral people who are done with having their awareness raised while evil triumphs". | The concept is as simple as ordering take-out: pick your adventure from the convenience of your home by giving money and telling Pelton where to go and what to do, and Pelton and his team will "deliver the product". He describes it as a "tool for moral people who are done with having their awareness raised while evil triumphs". |
| To demonstrate just how skilled they are and what they are able to accomplish, the first mission will be to find a man US special forces have failed to locate: the notorious war crimes suspect and Lords Resistance Army leader, Joseph Kony. Others who've tried the same "have limitations to what they are prepared to do, and they after a while start to benefit from the existence of Kony," Pelton told Foreign Policy. "It becomes a self-licking lollipop." We assume he is talking about Invisible Children. His team is different, he claims. The righteous are coming to finally solve Africa's biggest problem. For newcomers, the Foreign Policy article includes a useful summary of Invisible Children's previous efforts to stop Kony: | To demonstrate just how skilled they are and what they are able to accomplish, the first mission will be to find a man US special forces have failed to locate: the notorious war crimes suspect and Lords Resistance Army leader, Joseph Kony. Others who've tried the same "have limitations to what they are prepared to do, and they after a while start to benefit from the existence of Kony," Pelton told Foreign Policy. "It becomes a self-licking lollipop." We assume he is talking about Invisible Children. His team is different, he claims. The righteous are coming to finally solve Africa's biggest problem. For newcomers, the Foreign Policy article includes a useful summary of Invisible Children's previous efforts to stop Kony: |
| The group has raised millions of dollars off Kony's back for an organization with deep ties to anti-gay, creationist groups, and was co-founded by a man whose celebrity took on a life of its own after he suffered a breakdown and paraded naked through the streets of San Diego. | The group has raised millions of dollars off Kony's back for an organization with deep ties to anti-gay, creationist groups, and was co-founded by a man whose celebrity took on a life of its own after he suffered a breakdown and paraded naked through the streets of San Diego. |
| We always insisted that the evangelical basis for their campaign was weirdly ignored when the whole thing blew up. | We always insisted that the evangelical basis for their campaign was weirdly ignored when the whole thing blew up. |
| But back to Pelton. In his promo video he says he won't use the plight of people in Africa to entertain us: "What we're trying to do is not to use people's misery as entertainment, but we're trying to solve their problems." Of course, we hear him saying this right as the camera shows starving children and a boy with his hand cut off. While there is an overt dissonance between images and rhetoric in the video, that's part of the game; if anyone accuses him of the very thing he's doing, he can say that it's our fault for interpreting his intent incorrectly. The promotional video is also a great example of how journalism aimed at western audiences has become entertainment masquerading as activism, with little to do with the people whose problems they claim to be solving. | But back to Pelton. In his promo video he says he won't use the plight of people in Africa to entertain us: "What we're trying to do is not to use people's misery as entertainment, but we're trying to solve their problems." Of course, we hear him saying this right as the camera shows starving children and a boy with his hand cut off. While there is an overt dissonance between images and rhetoric in the video, that's part of the game; if anyone accuses him of the very thing he's doing, he can say that it's our fault for interpreting his intent incorrectly. The promotional video is also a great example of how journalism aimed at western audiences has become entertainment masquerading as activism, with little to do with the people whose problems they claim to be solving. |
| Then: Finding people is simple, he adds. And the UN knows where Kony is: they intercept his satellite phone. So, it's not like the NSA doesn't know where he is. So why does this genius need to take people from the ngo world (who are known for their investigative journalism) on a picturesque trek through stream beds framed by jungle ferns? | Then: Finding people is simple, he adds. And the UN knows where Kony is: they intercept his satellite phone. So, it's not like the NSA doesn't know where he is. So why does this genius need to take people from the ngo world (who are known for their investigative journalism) on a picturesque trek through stream beds framed by jungle ferns? |
| Chances are Pelton won't succeed. He is still way off his intended fundraising target. We could go on and on about this, but it will suffice to say: this is the newest example of activism as adventurism, in which Africa is a just a picturesque backdrop for entertainment. We don't need any more of it. | Chances are Pelton won't succeed. He is still way off his intended fundraising target. We could go on and on about this, but it will suffice to say: this is the newest example of activism as adventurism, in which Africa is a just a picturesque backdrop for entertainment. We don't need any more of it. |
| This post first appeared on the blog Africasacountry | |
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