Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Tactical media project

My plan for the video encompasses a call to action in the form of spoken word poetry. I begin with the observation that our modern world loves to fixate on tragedy, to turn it almost into amusement. I segue into the notion that, in order to make the Holocaust relevant again, we must make it the next chic tragedy. In lieu of explaining it all, here is my current script:

We live in a world of phenomenon
Tragedies happen every day
But we pick the ones to care about
Or rather
“They” do
They glom onto an event and show it on the news for 24 hours a day
They interview friends
And family
And use technology to reenact
And dissect every possible cause of this tragedy
They show you a pretty woman with impeccable hair
And a voice dripping with false concern
They drown you
They consume you
They play the same footage over
And over
Until finally you feel like an asshole for mentally begging to stop hearing about Columbine
About the Dark Knight Shooting
About Sandy Hook
About Haiti
About the Boston marathon
About the Malaysia flight
They exploit our short attention spans, our compulsive need to feel guilty and sad for things that truly have no bearing on our lives
And we fall for it
Every
Time
------------------------
So what can we do?
We can’t change the world
But we can use it to our advantage
We can make the Holocaust our next tragedy of the minute
The trendy event to care about
But why now?
What sense of urgency can we convey about an event that ended 70 years ago?
--------------------------------
Survivors are dying
If we want to follow “their” tried and true phenomenon method, we need the interviews
The people
The personal connection
We need it now
We need to become “them”
----------------------------------
So do it
Call your grandparents
They’d be glad to hear from you anyway
Call your friends
Call anyone who might be holding on to a fact
A story
A life
And release it
Post it anywhere
Post it on Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Blogs
Anywhere
This is our last chance to bridge the gap between history and phenomenon
Between truth and media
Between then and now
At least for the Holocaust
The Book Thief just grossed over 70 million dollars at the box office
One million dollars for every year since the Holocaust ended
The Book Thief is a movie
Based on a book
Loosely rooted in historical fiction
Imagine what we could do with the truth?
With old and young coming together in truth?
There are millions of stories out there
Hovering just at the edge
Waiting for a call like this
We just have to make people want to find them
To read them
To share them
---------------------------
Make the Holocaust the trendy cause
Make the Holocaust relevant again
Make the Holocaust part of the now
Share your stories
----------------------------
Holocaust means fire
Fire because towns were burned
Fire because lives were burned
Fire because worlds were burned
But now
We can start our own fire
Light the fire
Light the Holocaust
Light the phenomenon




I am still struggling with how to turn this into a video, but I am working on it.

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