We’ve complained a lot about celebrity aid campaigns here on Aid Watch, but somebody must like them since they keep happening over and over. Who is the target audience?
The celebrity aid campaign of the past few years has exactly three components:
1. Angelina Jolie
2. Music by U2
3. Picture of African mother and baby
So who is the audience that likes to gaze upon Angelina, enjoys 1980s Rock, and wants to save helpless African women and children? The answer is now obvious: chauvinistic middle-aged white males! (Speaking as an expert middle-aged white male)
A more serious analysis might note the irony of using Hollywood women as sex objects and seeing African women as the passive recipients of aid chivalry, when one of the objectives of aid is gender equality…but let’s not go there.
And it’s easy to understand why the campaigns target chauvinistic middle-aged white males, since they have the deepest pockets.
Political economy is a lot more fun than you thought…
15 Comments
“And it’s easy to understand why the campaigns target chauvinistic middle-aged white males, since they have the deepest pockets. ”
I think you are getting it completely the wrong way round.
Who benefits most from a Unicef Jolie campain?
Unicef, right…?
Have you ever seen a job ad from Unicef, Prof. Easterly?
What are they looking for?
(white male) “experts” with +/-15 years of professional experience, salary 100K $ plus perks.
So who’s working for Unicef ?
middle-aged white males!
So your statement becomes:
“And it’s easy to understand why the campaigns target chauvinistic middle-aged white males, since this group designs the campaigns ”
(it is proven that marketing boys use themselves as a good reference, and think everybody’s spending habits correspond to their own )
except Angelina Jolie is an ambassador for UNHCR not UNICEF.
As a female in her mid-twenties, having grown up in San Francisco amongst urban, socially-conscious, passionate, style and fashion-conscious youth, I beg to differ and would argue that thousands of young women actually look up to Jolie and her campaign work. These images are moving in whatever way; whether it’s sex appeal, feeling a punch in the stomach, or feeling moved by U2’s music, such campaigns are simply a way for the development field to be sexy and break into young, urban, pop culture and I see nothing wrong with that! Case in point, YouthAIDS, responsible for the “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” campaign in partnership with Aldo was spearheaded by a young British woman in her thirties, Kate Roberts, who formerly worked with the world-renowned Saatchi & Saatchi. I don’t think she was simply thinking about middle-aged white men. Quite the opposite – most likely her target were young women in their teens and twenties!
My biggest beef with Angelina Jolie was having her show up in a rural Thai village wearing a spaghetti strap tank top. Rural Thais would never dress that skimpily, it’s culturally inappropriate. If you’re going to be a goodwill ambassador, I’d hope you’d have enough deference to the people you are wanting to help by respecting their culture and beliefs while visiting them in an official capacity.
Minnie, there are 60 odd UN agencies making a difference.
kinda hard getting that alphabet soup right all the time.
But i remember UNICEF because one of their drivers almost killed my son with his Landcruiser.
*yawn* meh… you’re reaching on this one.
Now, if KISS was the band advocating the cause of poor African women, I might feel differently…
Saundra, _that’s_ your biggest beef with Angelina? Not whether her aid advocacy is effective or has a causal impact on development but that she wore a spaghetti-strap tank top? Good to know, that should make it pretty easy to fix the biggest problem at the World Bank, UN, etc. Just have the research dept. spend some more time figuring out what’s culturally appropriate and have people on mission dress like that, and voila, the biggest problem is solved. I had no idea it was so easy. You’ve been wrong all along, Prof. Easterly. Development _is_ easy!
I prefer when you criticize the development ideas of the celebrities rather than when you make ad homninem arguments. As if an idea couldn’t be good because they support it.
This being said, Foreigner is an 80s rock band. U2 is still kicking and its demographics extend beyond middle-age white men.
“…such campaigns are simply a way for the development field to be sexy and break into young, urban, pop culture and I see nothing wrong with that!”
Fair enough, but I think the problem with the trends described in the post is that they can get real inappropriate real fast. I can’t speak for you development types, but in the advocacy field, these trends in celebrity activism seem to have a trickle-down effect. So other celebrities who want to hop on the humanitarianism bandwagon take their cues from what’s been done previously (by U2, Jolie, etc), often with wildly inappropriate results. Take the ENOUGH Project’s promotional YouTube video featuring Emmanuelle Chriqui (the chick from Entourage) suggestively eating a popsicle while discussing sexual violence in Congo. It’s not thoughtfully avant-garde or provocative, it’s just sleazy. I understand the appeal of celebrity endorsements, but the sexed-up, trendy variety can quickly get out of hand.
Don’t read this. It’s offensive:
http://savedarfuraccountabilityproject.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/celebrity-activism-blows/
FYI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory
Sigh…
Sorry, too fast on the ‘Post’.
When are we through with the humorous summer lite editions?
Three in a row is a bit much for someone who even put down ‘entertaining’ on the recent survey.
Regards
Sceptical Secondo a.k.a. Anonymous (above)
“And it’s easy to understand why the campaigns target chauvinistic middle-aged white males, since they have the deepest pockets.”
So if these advocacy campaigns – whose goal is usually to raise money – are targeting the people with the deepest pockets, then isn’t that a GOOD thing? Doesn’t that make it more effective at achieving that goal? I would think you’d be applauding them for running targeted, efficient campaigns.
I’m not saying that there aren’t completely valid criticisms of celebrity campaigns, just that this post doesn’t address them. It seems more like an excuse for you (a self-described expert middle-aged white male)to post a picture of a scantily clad Angelina Jolie.
I’d have preferred to hear the more serious analysis of the chauvinist paradox of using a sex symbol alongside the African damsel in distress.
Not really my day.
Besides the present, three in a row referred to ‘the idiot’s answer’ and ‘are we allowed to talk about the paranoia of single dimensional thinking’
China piece ok
/Best
Completely disagree. Read the celebrity gossip sites and you’ll see how many women are gaga over Angelina’s UN safaris. Celebrity, mother, humanitarian, funky – seems to be a winning combination.
I wish they would all go away since I have zero interest in listening to a celebrity talking about a situation they’ve just flown into and pretend they know what they are talking about, but that’s by the by.
Indeed, this was a very lite post, uh?
You may be right, but it can be said something more serious about men and Mrs. Pitt…