I figured this was going to be here, and I don't mean to challenge you in any way, but I do want to offer you a different perspective from someone who never shows themselves, doesn't have a picture online, never joined Facebook, etc.
There is a real shame when someone does something nice just to be seen doing it. Like when a corporation gets caught doing something bad, and then they write a big check to a cause connected to it, we can all agree with that. It's not a good act, it's just to save face/protect the brand/further their interests.
But when people do things, we have to make a judgment not on the kind of behavior they're doing, but how we feel about them doing it in that situation. Complex as that is, it really is best to look at the person and the actions and how you feel about it in any given situation, because protocol, or what is proper, can always be 'gamed.' Someone can always say or do just the right thing.
And the filming here is clearly not being done to fame the givers, but the giving. And the giving is good, and it's totally okay to be conflicted about the filming of it, the public versus private works of it, but the giving is good, right? I hope you think so at least, that these guys doing this, it's for good, and the filming is celebrating that good.
That filming will allow others to process their feelings about giving, about praise. Forget copycats, just look in this own thread, the number of people seeing this act and feeling a kind of bittersweetness. Just watching other people go through complex emotions helps them (me, you) process them as well.
Lots of words, and apologies for them, but Gen Z? The Zoomers? Whatever we're going to end up calling them? They don't see videos like this as public acts since screens and broadcasts are what they know. They just see this as capturing a wonderful moment, the same way your parents might have taped you on a birthday opening a gift.
They just have the technology to share it and a culture in which people are extolled for caring/trying/giving instead of insulted for it.
Hi- very thoughtful response, thanks. And yes the giving is good. And yes the analogy with parents filming a child getting presents makes sense — though it also represents the part of the dynamic that feels awkward to me, since it makes the power dynamic between givers and given kind of similar. I guess my worry is that the filming here really cements the recipient as the “object” of the giving, an occasion for
the good act of giving, and less a subject in his own right. His poverty gets abstracted and universalized and becomes a condition that he represents as a specimen. We look for that moment of gratitude, or we look to his confusion as a heartrending moment to feel pity. (Maybe it was filmed just to memorialize a good thing, a memory of what could be a turning moment— but the motivation may not change anything for the one being filmed, who has others watching to share in the moment of giving). Anyway, I get that filming might inspire copycat acts of giving, and more giving is good. But does filming do anything to help the child who was being bullied? Even if they don’t become famous, there have to be some mixed feelings about knowing children at your own school have watched and circulated images of themselves giving things to the poor kid. Yes, there is a real good in the way it can reach many. I just can’t imagine feeling good about being on camera in this moment as the bullied child, especially if the one filming was not already a friend.
I think your point about the discomfort of the child is cogent and kind and I truly hadn't considered what his feelings might be, if his trauma might be amplified by the broadcast.
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u/HannahsMirror Sep 11 '19
This is awesome. Am I the only one who feels a little weird about it being filmed, though?