to find this video about a blind man totally offensive

[BiscuitMillionaire]

Shared by someone on facebook - it's actually an ad for a copywriting company, Purple Feather. It seems to have got lots of 'aw, so touching, tears in my eyes' comments. But I find it just awful. I'm not a member of the PC police normally, but seriously, I thought the days when we thought disabled people wanted strangers to feel sorry for them were over.
here

[hazeyjane]

No yanbu, it is bloody awful.

This is a good blog post about why

badcripple.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/purple-feather-offensive-in-extreme.html

[MiscellaneousAssortment]

But today's society is all about sentimental flooding of emotion, just to random individuals whose stories or looks grab us, whilst hating swathes of the undeserving.

I think they got it spot on, as long as you understand its marketing designed to show they know how to get under people's skin, not to show a better or aspirational view of society

Signed,
Cynical disabled person

[BuildYourOwnSnowman]

Agree it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth and is extremely patronising and offensive.

It's also really badly done. The feeling of the shoes, the slightly sinister woman, the implication that people are laughing at him, the close up of his flickering eyelids, the terrible acting. Would that statement make you give more money? Unlikely. Clearly made by people who have zero idea about disability but have tried to be 'worthy'.

[BiscuitMillionaire]

My God, Miscellaneous, that's a new low of cynicism! I see your point though. I don't think most people sharing it on facebook see it that way, however.

[BiscuitMillionaire]

Yes, BuildYourOwn, it's like the way a blind person would have been portrayed in the 1950s.

[hazeyjane]

This film has a strange and convoluted history - ending up with this crass film..

It was thought to be based on a speech by a copywriter about the power of words

In the original, the passerby adds the words 'it's spring and' - to 'I'm Blind. Please Help'

The idea being that he doesn't change the man's plea, he just adds the words, to transform it into the 'emotive sell'. He purposefully used the word, Spring, because it is open ended (the blind man in the film is going to be fucked if it starts raining).

Strangely it is a story that has also been made twice into short films, and is attributed originally to a poem by David Kirby about the experience of French poet Jacques Prevert

"On His Mother's Blindness

Prévert saw a beggar who had a sign that said “Blind Man Without a Pension.”
Prévert asked him how it was going.
The beggar replied …
“Oh, very badly. People pass by and drop nothing in my hat, the swine.”
Prévert took the sign from him and altered it.
A few days later, he went up to the beggar and again asked him how things were going.
The beggar said, “Fantastic! My hat fills up three times a day.”
Prévert had written the following on the beggar’s sign:
“Spring is coming, but I won’t see it.”"

[BiscuitMillionaire]

Thanks, interesting...

[ToadsJustFellFromTheSky]

Well...that was...odd.

[MiscellaneousAssortment]

Yay Biscuit do I win a big shiny cynic award :)

Yes, I was a media professional before I became disabled.

It's been rather eye opening since quite how awful the world I used to fit into is as soon as you change who you are. I didn't change, my body changed, and suddenly the way I was treated was very very different. Lazy stereotypes, the assumptions, the prejudice, the general 'ugh you don't look and move like us anymore so we don't think you're quite right anymore... and the look that says 'errrr, we might catch disabled' and the sighs of relief when I wasn't hanging around them, inconveniently making their world more... Ugly, foul, real.

Not just in that company, pretty all pervasive really. You find out who your friends are, and I found out most were the 'please stop inhabiting our world and go away now' kind of people.

Hence the utter hard boiled cynicism :)

[LazyLouLou]

Think it's real???????

As an aside: was it just me who was struck by the fact that The Madonna's shoes were too big, a la Minnie Mouse?

[BiscuitMillionaire]

Disappointed at how many people think this is real Yes it's incredible how gullible and unsophisticated many people seem to be.

Miscellaneous: that sounds hideous, to be treated that way. I hope you still have some friends who've stuck by you. You write well, have you thought about writing a piece on this subject? Hope that's not patronisingly obvious!