Can we now finally get rid of 'Do they know it's Christmas'?

[Tokenminority]

This song drives me absolutely up the wall. It's patronising, reductive, and it completely harms efforts towards equality.

I understand the focus on equal opportunities and stopping police brutality, but other narratives, such as the pictures painted in the 'Do they know it's Christmas' song, can be just as harmful.

'Africa' is not a country. You did not go on holiday to 'Africa', similarly to how you wouldn't have sent that you went on holiday to 'Europe' when you in fact went to France.

Of course there are major problems surrounding poverty on the African continent, just as there are in other places, but African countries are not only filled with begging, malnourished children who have never seen a Christmas present.

The picture attached is a photograph of Lagos. If I went on the street and asked random people on which continent that photo was taken, would anyone even consider the possibility that it may have been Africa?

OP, you obviously feel strongly that Geldof and Ure got it wrong. So strongly, in fact, that you compare them to a slave-trader who killed 20,000 Africans. That being the case, could you explain what you are yourself doing to alleviate global poverty? You're so clear that Band Aid was wrong that I assume you must have found a better way. Could you share it?

OP do you remember when Live Aid happened?

FFS! YABU, it served a purpose. Yes it's not really relevant in this day and age but what is? Should we go out and bump off all the older generation who are also not relevant and "up to date" with the latest buzz words. It is what it is, some things need to just die out and it is definetly getting less air play every year.

Lordfrontpaw
I think the OP was asked something similar and I understood Live Aid happened before she was born

Oh so they know all about it then. It was a bloody Big Thing. It was huge - there just hasn’t been anything like it in the U.K. It did a load of good and raised £££ and awareness. It got people off their arses and raising money for a good causes.

Maybe people are just jaded with sports aid, pudsey bear, etc raising money for some good (and some dubious) charities with their annual blackmail-a-thons.

Completely agree. It's particularly bad with the African continent. But unhelpful and prejudiced view of developing countries is common and hide how much these countries contribute to the world economy. They aren't beggars. The charities have a lot to answer in that aspect too

Can we get rid of So this is Christmas (War is Over) for the same reason?

And so happy Christmas for black and for white,
(War is over if you want it)
For the yellow and red ones,
Let's stop all the fight.
(War is over now)

It's time we stopped calling people yellow and red too. I've seen kids being given canary yellow paint in KS1 as their skin colour because they are Chinese or Japanese.

Lordfrontpaw - I thought that - if you were alive when Live Aid happened, you understand what a huge moment it was.

I teach English Literature and one of the things my students learn to do is to consider texts in their contexts - so approach them with an understanding of the world they grew out of, and how a contemporary audience might have regarded the issues they explore in comparison to a twenty-first century reading of them. It's a really useful skill.

What we don't do is destroy all the texts that offend twenty-first century values and beliefs in an effort to pretend that they didn't exist.

@theonlylivingboyinnewcross that kind of critical thinking isn’t very fashionable these days.

I've read the thread and I'm left with the impression the OP has had a recent epiphany and decided to educate us all because she assumed the rest of us were as uniformed as she was until that point.
FWIW I had an American colleague in the 90's who told me they were surprised British homes had microwaves!

YANBU...I always thought that song was poorly written and highly patronising, it was just a big gravy train for Geldof's career and ego, and not much else. The money didn't even go to help those in need. The fact he still dines on it always makes me feel a little sick tbh.

Geldof also recently had the cheek to ask what the point was of Lady Gaga's One World streamed concert was when it raised tonnes of money to help with the Corona crisis!

I really dislike Geldof, can you tell.

ps. This is worth a read. This is my main issue with it as obviously I can ignore some dubious lyrics if that was all that was wrong with the song. Geldof was warned the money wouldn't reach the right people and he carried on:

www.spin.com/featured/live-aid-ethiopia-mengistu-haile-mariam-bob-geldof/

Whilst I agree with your main point I just with to point out that many many people say they're going to America when they mean USA and many Americans say they're going to Europe. Not important really but just wanted to throw it in there.

Woodland As someone said up thread, if you say going to Africa, it is a continent, and it saves listing a lot of the places to which you might be going. My U.S. friends always bang on about 'European' history and culture, as opposed to that of each individual nation situated within Europe.

Agree its ignorant and patronising. Even the bit about "you wont get snow in Africa" is based on some obvious ill informed stereotypes of the continent. It snows in mountainous areas regularly.

And the line "thank god its them instead of you". God it grates on me every time I hear it. I am white BTW.

I don't doubt they meant well with it at the time and it raised some money but I could live without hearing it again. It contributes to a rather old fashioned "othering" of African nations today.

It's a song. Lots of songs say lots of things that aren't really relevant now. If you don't like it turn it off. I am all for equality and I'm not a racist some people always have to take something to the next level.

Even the bit about "you won't get snow in Africa" is based on some obvious ill informed stereotypes of the continent.

No it isn't. It's an allegory.

It is alluding to the fact that all we have to worry about is whether we might wake up to a lovely snowy scene on Christmas morning. We are looking forward to something to make our lives even nicer, whereas all they have to look forward to is starving to death. It is bringing home the sheer triviality of our worries compared with theirs.

@FOJN

Lordfrontpaw I think the OP was asked something similar and I understood Live Aid happened before she was born

The fact that I don't remember live aid because it was before I was born is a major part of my point.

Every one who keeps making this into about some attack on charitable giving has not understood the point I've been trying to make. I have nothing against charity, whether that charity is meant to benefit African countries or Grenfell.

I would also have nothing against the song if, as so many keep trying to claim, it was of its time and was no longer relevant.

The song is still actively being used, updated and played during appeals. I don't have a problem with the appeals. I have a problem with the fact that 40 or so years after this song came out, we still can't write something that is slightly more nuanced in its message.

As someone who wasn't born when live aid happened, the first time I learned that it had anything to do with the 1984 famine in Ethiopia was six years ago, because the recorded an updated version with equally problematic lyrics. Not even one single word in the original lyrics of this song tells you that it's about Ethiopia, or even about a specific disaster. If you make the argument that I would understand better if I had been there...well that's the point. I wasn't there, so all this song is telling me is that Africa is a very miserable place. Same with a lot of others who are 36 or younger. Unlike WW2 or the slave trade, there is not exactly lots of nuanced opinion or information lying around about 80s history in the African continent, except if you go look for it. The majority of people I live and work with are not the type of people who would do this, so their opinion of Africa (and sometimes by extension, black people) is entirely based on what they see on telly, or which songs they hear at Christmas.

The difference between this song and Pretty Woman, is that Pretty Woman is not trying to sell you an actual reality. Pretty Woman is a work of fiction, whilst the song is trying to influence your real perception of 'the world outside your window'.

All of this would absolutely not bother me at all if the song, as everyone says, has absolutely no influence on or relevance to how anybody in 2020 perceives Africa or Africa's black population, either when it comes to charitable giving or wider context. I'm saying that it does still influence the way people see Africa and Africa's black population, and that songs like these can lead to negative stereotypes if left unchecked. And by left unchecked I don't mean 'unbanned'. I mean that if the majority of material that the average person in the UK is exposed to in 2020 is still of the exact same tone and content of a 1984 song with questionable lyrics, then this is a problem that should be addressed.

Yes, I was angry when I first posted this, due to an experience that I'd had that day. And I was subsequently angry and upset that posters on here try to discredit that experience by

a) totally ignoring my point and making this into a debate on whether live aid was a good idea. And what I've done to save the planet.

b) telling me what I am and am not allowed to be upset about.

I was fully expecting pushback on the opinion regarding banning the song, and I wish my initial post had been less hostile, but I wasn't expecting such a major pushback on my feelings.

I'll ask again, because nobody actually answered my last question. If I'm upset about the song still being used (but for the sake of argument, let's assume I'm not alone in finding this song offensive), and you don't even like the song and couldn't care less about its existence, why does it matter so much if the song stops being played as often? It doesn't have to banned, but likewise, it also doesn't have to be the (in theory) 2020 Africa Covid-19 Christmas appeal song, and it doesn't have to appear on the radio every other second. What is so problematic about that, compared to let's say, taking Little Britain of the air?

Sometimes I wonder if it is because limiting 'Do they know it's Christmas' which a lot of people have donated money to, feels as though it would be some kind of admission of wrongdoing. Just to say, I don't think anybody did anything wrong by donating to live aid, and that's not what I am trying to say, but I don't often hear such a passionate defence of something which starts with the words 'I hate it and it's crap, and it served its purpose in 1984'.

To me it does feel a bit similar to the Golliwogs discussion. Some people were so against banning the sale of them, and I think that was in part because if they'd played with the dolls in the past and it was decided that they should be banned, it would make them seem as though they were or had been at some point in time, racists.

So let's say I propose banning it being played on the radio and appearing on TV ads if the lyrics stay the way they are, for the reasons I've mentioned above. You can still buy the song and play it at home. Would this bother you, and if so, why? I would genuinely like to know. How does this compare to little Britain?

It wasn't just Ethiopia though, people seem to have forgotten that northern Kenya and parts of Sudan and other neighbouring countries were also suffering from drought and famine. Ethiopia was worst affected because the famine began during a civil war, and was partly caused by government policy. The drought started when the famine was already under way, and that's what made it so much worse.

Have you written to Michael Buerk to ask him what he thinks about the lyrics? Have you written to the record companies, and through them to the songwriters to express your views?

You weren't born. You didn't sit there watching that television broadcast and feel like someone had punched you in the guts. You didn't sit there with tears streaming down your face (which indeed I am doing now, just remembering it). You cannot possibly know what it was like; to know that a million people were suffering and dying of starvation as you sat and watched. You cannot even begin to comprehend the mood that took the entire country by storm.

They needed our help like never before, and they got it. Largely due to Band Aid and Live Aid.

Please, just leave it alone now.

You weren't born. You didn't sit there watching that television broadcast and feel like someone had punched you in the guts. You didn't sit there with tears streaming down your face (which indeed I am doing now, just remembering it). You cannot possibly know what it was like; to know that a million people were suffering and dying of starvation as you sat and watched. You cannot even begin to comprehend the mood that took the entire country by storm.

This and it was never about viewing the populations of African nations as needing charity because they were backward, it was about acknowledging their human right not to starve to death.

OP if you haven't seen the footage, then please watch it. It's etched in my brain, I'll never forget it.

I remember the news footage that really kicked it all off. I had never seen anything so terrible (apart from WW2 black and white concentration camp photos).

Stick thin children being weighed in wings to determine whether they had a change of survival - and either given scant supplies of porridge or send to starve to death. Too weak to cry or brush the swarms of flies off their faces and eyes. Mothers listlessly sitting with skeletal babies trying to suckle from empty breasts.

We hadn’t really seen this on prime time tv in the U.K. - not to this extent. It was on the news, in the papers and people were horrified. There was no sugar coating it. ‘By the time you have seen this footage that child will be dead- because they have no food’.

Live Aid / Band Aid mobilised people to get off their complacent backsides and donate.

In terms of a moment in time and of a news report that deeply affected everyone that saw it, there are parallels with the impact that the murder of George Floyd has had around the world. Every right-thinking person who has seen the film of GF was horrified and has said no, not in my name. We must stop this.

Well that's what happened too when Michael Buerk's news report aired. We wanted to stop the famine. We wanted to do somehting about the very real suffering that was so wrong and so unjust. That doesn't mean every action was right, just as I'm sure there will be miss-steps in trying to make sure BLM, but I hope it helps to explain to you OP why people are a bit prickly about this. I happen to agree with you about the song - actually I've always thought it was a bit shit - and I also agree that it has had it's day. But I can't write off the efforts of generation to try to do something good.

Have you ever been to Lagos? I have. Several times over two decades including twice last year. Yes a few nice buildings (that look nicer at night and from a distance) have gone up in that time. The Eko island project for example. But it doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of the huge population is living in abject poverty, the result of decades of corrupt government that has never been stamped out. That photograph is in no way representative of what life is like for the vast majority of people who work and live in Lagos. I have seen whole communities living under flyovers (poorly maintained flyovers) with signs spray painted on the concrete saying ‘sleep here’ ‘shit here’.

As someone pointed out upthread, the song was put together in record time (no pun intended). Bob and Midge contacted everybody they knew and asked them to turn up, and they had no idea, even when recording started, who was going to walk through the door. Everybody who was available appeared, and brought others with them. The beginning was being recorded before they'd even finished writing the end. There was no time to fanny about. Just get it done.

There's a documentary about the making of it somewhere. I've watched it.

Al1Langdownthecleghole That's a very helpful comparison for anyone who isn't old enough to remember 1983. You're exactly right - we saw something terrible and we wanted to help. Was the response perfect? No. Will everything done in support of BLM be perfect, or fit with society's values in 40 years? No. But that doesn't mean BLM is wrong.

People like the OP are never the ones who actually do something constructive themselves. People who actually get off their backsides to help appreciate how difficult it is, and how even the best of intentions do not always produce a great result. But that doesn't mean it is wrong to try.

I find the OP's comparison of Geldof/Ure to Colston extremely offensive- far more offensive than anything in Band Aid's lyrics. It trivialises the 19,000 deaths and 100,000 enslavements that Colston caused, and it slanders two men who were trying to save lives. And I say that as someone who agrees that it's time to stop playing Band Aid. But slagging off Geldof/Ure for their original attempts is ignorant and twattish.