The campaign also contains posters with images of Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin coupling with an assumed to be unsuspecting lady friend. The campaign concept is “AIDS is a mass murderer”.
Since its release, the campaign has sparked controversy around the world. The video was pulled from YouTube last week and there has been public engagement both for and against the campaign concept.
On the one hand, the campaign has already been successful. The campaign has not even had its official launch onto German television and cinema screens and yet the images have caught the interest of the world. das comitee wanted to create a campaign that would spark flagging public interest in the AIDS epidemic. The three campaign goals were:
- to shake people up
- to bring the topic of AIDS back to centre stage
- to reverse the trend of unprotected sexual intercourse
Whatever your opinion on the campaign, the public engagement we have seen to date makes a strong case for the success of the first two goals.
On the other hand we have stigma. Stigma plays a big and heavy hand in this campaign. Comparing someone who is sexually active and HIV positive to one of the most reviled men in history has been receiving a lot of negative feedback from ASO’s (AIDS Service Organizations) across Europe and North America.
Monique Doolittle, Executive Director of the Canadian AIDS Society was quoted in Canadian press saying “I’m really concerned that it will actually strengthen the stigma. With the ad, you can’t separate HIV and AIDS from the person with HIV, so it’s sending the wrong message.”
We here at The A Word want to know what you think. Do you see any merit in this campaign? Do you think this campaign helps or hurts our cause? Do you simply find the images distasteful?
We want to know what you think.
View all campaign materials here: http://www.aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com/
4 comments:
Your analysis of this campaign and the response to it is well-considered, concise, and accurate.
This campaign is a failure because it does not generate the kind of attention that will serve the stated objectives of the campaign.
Fear-mongering and finger-pointing will not help educate people who do not understand the real risks and costs of HIV/AIDS.
People aren't really talking about AIDS/HIV, they are talking about the ad and the ad seems to me to communicate the wrong message.
The metaphor is wrong with respect to HIV/AIDS and, what's worse, it belittles the Holocaust.
I haven't seen the ad but, based on what you say here, it should be noted that two people haven't unprotected sex is not necessarily wrong. Are they married, for example?
Even if the video makes it clear that these two people are total strangers having unprotected sex, that act is irresponsible but it is nothing like planning and undertaking genocide.
Now let's imagine the ad makes it clear that the man knows he has HIV. Again, knowingly putting someone at risk of contracting the virus is nothing like planning and then mobilizing the machinery of the state to try to exterminate an entire people.
A man with HIV having unprotected sex is recklessly endangering another person and Hitler and Stalin did a lot more then recklessly endanger a few people.
Moreover HIV/AIDS is not mass murder. It's a virus and a disease. Equating AIDS itself to a mass murder obscures the underlying issues that allow HIV/AIDS to spread. The steps needed to stop a murder are not the same as stopping a virus / disease. One probably involves guns, the other involves condoms and education.
And why is the male the evil party in this story? The women is equally culpable. if the sex is consenting.
But it might be said, didn't the campaign trigger this post, my response, and this dialogue!
Unfortunately, we are not the target market. The people who need to hear the correct message are not going get it from this ad campaign and they certainly aren't going to to go looking for it after seeing this campaign.
They will simply ignore the whole discussion because it is so over the top and/or because they are offended.
Thank you for your comment Sterling. And you are right, we are having a dialogue about this, which would never have happened without the original campaign.
To address your point about the man playing the evil party. I would suggest that a) there may not be a female equivalent to Hitler and b)transmission is more likely to occur man-woman just based on how all our parts are set up. Female genitals have a much larger surface area where HIV can enter the body during sex.
To play devil's advocate (because I'm not sure people who truly believe other than us would read this blog), some people might say that having unprotected sex is tantamount to walking straight into a gas chamber (or so I read on one forum).
So, people are literally taking their life into their own hands when they disregard safer sex options.
Also, we know and we can see (we, the ASO's) a population that is experiencing safer sex messaging fatigue. How many times have you heard messaging tell you to put a condom on. We all know that we should be putting condoms on.
But we don't. So what do we, as a society, need to be able to hear that message. Are shock tactics not worth a shot?
(to be crystal clear, we don't believe that to be the case. but we are very concerned about message fatigue and how to work around it)
I appreciate a good devil's advocate. :)
Yes, women are more at risk once the decision is made to have unprotected sex. It is the decision which is crucial to exposure to the risk and for consenting adults that is where the irresponsibility lies.
It's not like walking into a gas chamber because the gas chamber was created with the intention of exterminating an entire people. AIDS was not created to exterminate people and unprotected sex does not necessarily lead to infection.
A more apt metaphor is playing Russian roulette with a stranger and you haven't had a chance to check how many bullets are in the gun they hand you.
Yes, message fatigue is an issue. Yes, shock tactics can be an effective response but the shock tactic needs to serve a clear message and call to action.
Equating AIDS with dictators and mass murder doesn't serve any clear or useful message as far as I can see. Where's the call to action? How would this motivate action? To what end?
This campaign really has no message or goal other than to be offensive and mention AIDS while doing it.
Plus doom and gloom is hardly new for this issue. I am sure a lot of people will walk away form this thinking, there they go again.
I just found the quote I was looking for:
"giving AIDS the face of Hitler is not just a shock tactic, it is a brilliant metaphor for the silent, creeping spread of a disease that is destroying whole populations in Africa"
That is from an article on a London site called The First Post.
I like the way she phrased it, talking about the silent, creeping spread. We often think of Nazism as something that kind of seeped out into a populace.
And I like the idea that this is something that we could get under control if we would just own up to it. Populations can and do revolt when the circumstances are right.
The circumstances maybe weren't right for the Germans to stand up to Hitler's extremeism but what will it take for our world to stand up the AIDS epidemic.
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