The Invisible Kony: Making a Decision

Kony 2012. Chances are you’ve heard of this, but you may not know exactly what it is.

In 1987 Joseph Kony started up The Lord’s Resistence Army (LRA) and has since been fighting a civil war in Uganda, aiming to make it a Christian nation.

To pursue his aims, Kony has kidnapped an estimated 30,000 children. As an estimated figure, based on the numbers reported missing and the sightings of his child army, this is terrifying because the actual figure is both impossible to accurately attain and likely to be severely higher than this. These children are used as his soldiers, sex slaves, pack mules and, in order to prevent them from having a home to go back to, are often forced to kill their own parents. These are known as the Invisible Children.

In 2005, The International Crime Court secured warrants for the arrest of Kony and his top commanders. In 2006, peace talks began. Kony sent men on his behalf and after two years of negotiations a contract was ready to sign. Kony didn’t show up.

Kony 2012 is a documentary about the invisible man which aims to ‘make him famous’ not in celebration, but to bring his crimes to light and recently it went viral. It overtook the aimed-for 500,000 viewers and is sitting at about 4million today after being shared and sent across Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.

This documentary highlights a struggle that is, of course, something which needs to be dealt with. But what about the torment that’s been going on in Syria for the past fifty years? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict went into negotiations two years ago and I haven’t heard anything that indicates they’re anywhere near reaching an agreement. Then there’s starving children in Africa, and the development of drugs for cancer and HIV and somewhere in the world a celebrity has probably put on weight.

Please, don’t think I’m being blasé. This is horrendous and of course I want it to stop, but this has come to light and is now at the forefront of everyone’s mind, after twenty-six years, because a video went viral. It still has fewer views that ‘Charlie the Unicorn’ and I am of the opinion that it always will unless the name of Kony carries the weight everything he’s done.

However, the extent of most peoples’ help towards this campaign is simply to have made #MakeKoryFamous a popular twitter trend today and, in the words of Tom Milson, retweeting about Kory is about as much use as putting a cake in a box and posting it with a notes saying “To Africa, Get Well Soon! Love Alice”. It loses it’s weight and it’s meaning and that’s when people forget to care.

I think it’s fantastic that people are interested in this and are being educated on a subject that they may have previously known nothing about, but it will be so easy to lose sight of what all these online phrases and videos and conversations actually represent; The Invisible Children. These children have orphaned themselves and been subjected to the most abhorrent conditions, we cannot comprehend such a thing from our cosy rooms with our laptops and our cups of tea. I may be wrong, but  I doubt they want your sympathy, and they definitely do not want your #hashtags. That is, not unless they represent the sum of your power and knowledge as to what is actually happening.

My point, which will be debated by the few who bother to read this, is that we are in serious danger of forgetting all about this. The documentary begins with “Nothing is More Powerful Than an Idea Whose Time is Now”. Of course, from where I stand, it will be easy enough to sleep soundly tonight and get up tomorrow to continue my life.

Although I believe in documentary’s idea of “Who are you to end a war? Who are you not to?”, this is not me suggesting that we should all book a plane ticket and set off on a one-man crusade to end tragedy in the world. No, what I’m trying to do is point out has little to do with Kony and more to do with our access of the information on him. The message that knowing about him will help stop him is a strong one, but it is not enough in itself as knowing of him and knowing him are separate.

I have the Kony 2012 pack arriving, I intend to participate on April 20th, but it will only be enough if enough people, who know of him, take action to know him and to stop him. I do not mean to preach, I am not suggesting everyone donates to the cause, I just think it is important to make everyone aware of what the cause actually is, not just roughly what it’s about.

I am worried because sometimes, I believe, we overlook simply by seeing.

 

EDIT:

Just want to add a quick response to those using this article (or similar) as a rebuke.

I would argue that protesting, rising up and making a stand against something, is very different from channelling money into an organisation. Joining in on April 20th says you are against Kony and his army of child slaves and you believe having him caught would make the world just a teeny bit nicer, it does not benefit Invisible Children in a monetary sense.

This is why I’ve bought the pack, and will take part, and will keep informed, but will not pledge a monthly donation until they tighten-up where exactly it is going.

This is kind of the point of my entry; it is about being informed and then making a decision. People who go with the flow or sit on the fence because choosing is too hard are the ones this is aimed at, I’m not necessarily saying that everyone should follow my intentions of joining in, as long  as you are informed and make an active decision, then you are doing the right thing, whether that means you participate or don’t, you are sticking to what you believe.

So, You Think You Know Irene…

I warn you now, I was a little perturbed by annoying essay-block, illness and sleep-deprivation when I wrote this…

I have spent almost the last half of my life as an avid Sherlockian, so I was more than dubious when Moffat, a writer I greatly respected, said he was bringing Sherlock Holmes back in a modern day context to make him more relatable. I gave it a chance, Moffat was responsible for the new wave of ‘Doctor Who’ episodes that actually scared me and the, fantastically done, reworking of ‘Jekyll’. I was more than pleasantly surprised. Two episodes into first series, I pre-ordered the DVDs, DVDs which have, since then, been watched and passed around my friends in the successful attempt to convert many non-fans.

I am a bit late in the game it seems, what with essays that I actually need to do for my degree and what-not, but I have just found time to watch the first ninety-minute episode of the new series; something I had hungered for, had eagerly anticipated and , rather than watching it with my dear family, had decided to save for the night I was alone in my flat, back at university. I thought it would be a comfort. I was sorely mistaken. In fact, it made me angry – no, actually, not angry – disappointed. So much so that I decided to write a blog post.

There were things I liked, things I loved even; Sherlock shouting ‘shut up’ at the doorbell to make up for John not being home; John’s reaction to the helicopter was priceless, as was the little ginger policeman who informed him about it who I really had hoped would make a reappearance to salvage some of the show; Molly’s Christmas present was possibly the cutest thing ever and I could accept that because everything that was hopeless and stupid in her character was summed up in the first series and I could forgive her on the grounds that some women really do fall in love with total arseholes and there’s nothing that can be done.

Let’s start at the beginning, as it seems a good enough place to start…

Not what I expected. I’ll give it that. I saw Sherlock shooting the bomb, diving into the pool to escape, dragging John with him. Wouldn’t work? Well, turtles were around at the time of dinosaurs and apparently they escaped by being under water, not a perfect explanation, but it’s all scientists have for us. Also, Moffat doesn’t seem to always ring true to exactly ‘what would work’, so that’s what I was expecting.

Why was I expecting this? Well, the first series held so true to the original stories, or rather, everything that people like me cling onto from the original stories. There’s no use pretending that they were great works of literary genius, Conan Doyle forgot how many wives Watson had and at one point seems to rename the Landlady, but we, as fans, find things we hold dear. One of the things which cannot be disputed (provided you are aware that the ‘Valley of Death’ is written by John Watson out of sequence) is that Moriarty died upon the Reichenbach Falls and therefore should have died by the poolside. Instead, Moriarty’s phone begins playing the 1977 Bee Gees’ classic “Staying Alive” and he wanders off. Holmes would happily destroy himself for the chance to beat Moriarty, apparently Sherlock would not. Here lies the first moment in which this new, second series lost my favour.

If only it regained itself, found its originally true heart, after this…

My first concern is with the titles John uses for his blog such as ‘The Speckled Blonde’ and the ‘Navel  Treaty’, names based upon stories in the original canon, and yet John Watson correctly names the Holmes case that was never published ‘The Aluminium Crutch’. These hurt me, Moffat. I did not want homage to Doyle, but to poke fun in one way whilst defying your own logic by giving a true reference felt shoddy. You’ve also cut yourself off – the speckled band is one of the best short-stories there is, by popular demand, not just my obsessive pleasure. It shows Holmes at his weakest due to his worries that he’s put John in harm’s way. It’s beautiful and, now, thanks to a glib comment you can’t undo, you can never, ever do it justice.

Secondly, the deerstalker. I know I’m being weird and picky, but I have on a piece of paper, supposedly designated to notes on my essay, scribbled ‘THE FUCKING DEERSTALKER’.

Okay, so my fanaticism is showing, but you were doing so well in keeping with what people loved by picking the parts of the text people held most dear and, yet, you chose the deerstalker. You knew full well Holmes never, ever, ever, ever wore a deerstalker.

The deerstalker as signature is a belief popularised by noted Sherlock Homes stage-actor William Gillet, based upon an image drawn by Sidey Paget for the original stories when printed in the Strand Magazine, but the image was not based upon any text, in fact, it is only by luck that Paget drew anything close to the description given of the detective as all the pictures were based upon Paget’s brother.

Thirdly – Sherlock in a sheet. I understand Benedict Lovelybuns (if that is his real name) has become somewhat of a dashing figure, despite the supposed automaton he’s playing, but there’s no need for this scene. It’s supposed to give rise to a wonderful power-play between Sherlock and Mycroft, but a power-play in which one party is naked (except possibly in the case of Irene Adler, which I shall cover in a moment) is hardly a power-play at all but more a game of Holmes-brother ‘chicken’.

Then there are little, picky, complaints I have for instance the fact that, from the back, certainly in earlier scenes, Cumberbatch does not look like he knows how to play a violin. Jeremy Brett, a man who knew not the first thing about the violin and occasionally had to reshoot scenes because he wore his hat the wrong way round looked more convincing onstage in front of a live audience than this Sherlock. Also, John (who had all the best lines in this episode) is apparently a misogynist now. He has a new girlfriend, apparently just one in a long string of girlfriends, and offers to walk her non-existent dog, confusing her for his last girlfriend who did have a dog. Seriously? Admittedly, the number of wives Watson had is something that has no-doubt spawned a multitude of fan-fiction, but this can all be easily put down to Doyle neither caring very much about his characters or choosing to write in sequence. The face he had two at most, with the slight improbability of a third (and more improbably a fourth), can be accounted for by Doyle’s lack of interest in the character that boosted him to popular demand. Why bring that back in 2012?

This leads nicely on to what, I suppose, some will conclude is just a feminist’s rant; Irene Adler.

How is that a man, who believed women should not be educated above their duties in the house, could write a strong, vibrant woman in 1891, yet we fall back into some kind of lost archetype of the dominatrix with a soft spot for high-functioning sociopaths today?

In the original stories, Adler kept a photograph of a Bohemian King, who had promised her marriage only to go back on his word. She kept it only in order to protect herself from his fury when she chose to marry another man. She outwitted Sherlock Holmes and saw through two, very clever, disguises.

This time round, however, Adler does not outwit Sherlock. In fact, she gives up her only protection to a madman in a sheet whom she fancies a bit and it is only by unexplained good graces that he is there to save the day at the last. In this story, above all, Holmes should not be a hero. He should not be infallible. And he certainly should not be the position to see a naked woman with a 24 inch waist. He should be defeated. Holmes calls her ‘The Woman’ out of respect, Watson makes it very clear that he never felt anything akin to love, and yet here Sherlock and Irene are, on my screen, having something kind of wild, every-teenage-girl fantasy, romance.

I read the original stories when I was about ten. They were my transition from children’s literature into adult fiction. Irene Adler was the first real woman I’d ever read about. She is, in ‘A Scandal In Bohemia’, a proto-feminist, and this new adaptation might have offended me as a woman and as a Sherlockian, but more so it offended every sensibility in me that believed the BBC had, in its midst, somewhat of a visionary.

After Amy Pond was turned from being my favourite companion at the beginning of series five into little more than a walking, talking, ‘feisty’ uterus by the end of series six, I wanted to see something real. But now, with this new take on Irene ‘dominatrix-in-see-through-underwear’ Adler, I feel I’m left wondering if Moffat can really write women, or whether he’s  just falling into the sparkly-vampire-fetishism take on gender that people seem to be going for these days.