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?

For me, growing up in a small town in the west of Ireland, in the 80s, pre internet, where news was delivered only via parents insisting on turning off Whatever drivel we were watching to watch six o’clock news, this song and Live Aid meant something that you could never replicate now in this much smaller world we live in. First those horrific reports - Before my experience of human suffering had been the Trocaire box through the door at Lent (to be filled with coins and sent back to feed the poor). Then those live reports, then having a chance to do something by buying that record, sitting up all Day:night Watching live aid And phoning the donation line to pledge A few pounds, then walking to the local bank and giving the donation the next day. For me, it was a kind of an awakening and there’s no way to translate that experience into 2020 ideology. The song lyrics are bad but the whole experience was much more important in allowing people to take action in a way that is taken for granted today.

The guy wrote the song in his lunch hour, it was hardly meant to be an in depth social and political analysis of the continent of Africa. The lyrics sound dated now but the only reason we're having a conversation about white saviours and how the wrong kind of charity can hinder people as much as help them is because things like Live Aid woke the western world up to the idea that perhaps we had some sort of responsibility towards poorer countries beyond a) not colonising them any more and b) sending the Queen to say hello every 20 years.

Also, weren't the lyrics written in a huge hurry, so perhaps they didn't have time to consider them as carefully as they might have?

Ethiopian oranges?
The song has dated terribly but it was written on the back of a receipt when the famine across many African countries ( particularly Ethiopia) was horrendous.
It was a dire emergency on a massive scale. Not quite the same as comic relief 'white saviours ' heading out to help build a little hospital.

Sorry about all the misplaced capitals!

I’m old enough to remember the Biafran famine.

Cross post with toomuchtooold!

Wow I'd never paid close attention to the lyrics before. What a stupid thing to say - thank God it's not you? No rivers in Africa? These folk never heard of the Nile...

Yes the lyrics are dire but it served its purpose wonderfully and here we are 20 (?) years later still talking about it, and it's still on the radio each xmas season, there has been Band Aid 20 etc.

I grew up in South Africa and the line "and there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas" always made me smile, what with the snow on Table Mountain and the Drakensberg appearing like clockwork each year. It's the equivalent of Toto wanging on about lepresses on the Serengeti except, as it raised squillions for charity, I'll forgive them .

[quote PinGwyn]**@malificent7* i think it's "the greatest gift they'll get this year is life*"

Love would've been a nice sentiment though, but no, "they" should be grateful for breathing!

OP - it is very of its time but I don't think that means it should be sent to the bin. Lots of songs translate badly but they're still catchy.[/quote]
Love would've been a nice sentiment though, but no, "they" should be grateful for breathing!

Have you not actually see the footage that prompted the international campaign to help with the famine? They were living corpses. So yes, life would have been a gift.

I have always hated this song mostly as it’s got an appalling tune. However I find the over analysis equally frustrating. It wasn’t anything to do with Ethiopians being black. It was because they were living in a dust bowl after years of no rain and frequent military attacks.
It was to help the actual people, not as part of some racist western campaign.

I also inferred that “Do they know it’s Christmas” was meant for us, as in show your Christmas spirit by donating. Not literally.

Whenever this comes up I'm shocked again at people's ego and self centredness

Actually comparing their own woke credentials against a humane, generous and widespread urge to put food in starving bellies.

That overwhelming desire to help, the pragmatic and co operative urge to do something measurably real is actually the best of us.

And then for well fed future people tweeting their oh so correct views about how 'problematic' it is from their iPhones - while doing nothing about the starvation that still goes on. There's something so utterly bankrupt about it.

What a stupid thing to say - thank God it's not you?

To be fair I always took that as sarcasm - as in look at them, and too easy to look away and not at yourself sitting eating and drinking and being merry

No. I was living in Germany for the last 1975-2018 and it was not all that popular there. I've never been a fan of pop music, so...

^ That was in reply to Quaagers asking if I've been living in Mars! Really funny this expectation that we are all in one homogenous cultural bubble!

let’s just encourage them to do that without the god awful lectures about the right way in which people must be helped that currently aligns with the latest right on theory.

Yes - but thats an oversimplification. There ARE better and worse ways to help people. As a basic example, most people would rather have a decent job than use food banks. A society with sufficient decent jobs is better than one with insufficient decent jobs but food banks struggling to fill the hole for 5 -10 million.

Have an eye roll emoji 🙄 and stop bring a joy sponge.

There are lots of songs with questionable lyrics (cardi B anyone?) but this song raised millions and continues to do so every year. I'll buy you a pair of ear plugs. You're welcome.

^ That was in reply to Quaagers asking if I've been living in Mars! Really funny this expectation that we are all in one homogenous cultural bubble!

Yes, I realised the utter irony of my comment on this thread straight after pressing post lol

Yeah bloody charity.

No one is saying it wasn't a good thing they did

I mean, they kind of are (especially the obnoxious OP)

@7Days

Whenever this comes up I'm shocked again at people's ego and self centredness

Actually comparing their own woke credentials against a humane, generous and widespread urge to put food in starving bellies.

That overwhelming desire to help, the pragmatic and co operative urge to do something measurably real is actually the best of us.

And then for well fed future people tweeting their oh so correct views about how 'problematic' it is from their iPhones - while doing nothing about the starvation that still goes on. There's something so utterly bankrupt about it.

100% spot on 7Days.

I remember it very well and recall those terrible news reports by Michael Buerk. I was young and had never seen anything like it before. It galvanised something very pure and generous in the UK (and wider) which I agree reflects the best of humanity in the face of the worst.

OP why haven't you returned to your miserable, mean spirited, spiteful thread? You put the question out there - have the courage to come and defend your views.

@7Days

Whenever this comes up I'm shocked again at people's ego and self centredness

Actually comparing their own woke credentials against a humane, generous and widespread urge to put food in starving bellies.

That overwhelming desire to help, the pragmatic and co operative urge to do something measurably real is actually the best of us.

And then for well fed future people tweeting their oh so correct views about how 'problematic' it is from their iPhones - while doing nothing about the starvation that still goes on. There's something so utterly bankrupt about it.

You do realise it's possible to understand the problematic nature of something and and still do things.

Just fuck off with this assumption that people critical of a shit song aren't also engaged with the issues of the world and doing their bit to help in tangible, productive, non-white-person-buying-a-single-and-going-awww-the-poor-children. The fact is, life is'nt as simple as "oh, look at all those poor kids, let's pull a song out of our arses/pay £1.99 for said song and all the problems of the world go away".

It takes more than that, you do realise, and stereotyping over 1 billion people as collection of ignorant charity cases does not fucking help the situation terribly much.

So piss off with this woke bollocks and educate yourselves.

OP why haven't you returned to your miserable, mean spirited, spiteful thread? You put the question out there - have the courage to come and defend your views.

Probably because it's a zombie thread from June.

@EssentialHummus you grew up in a South Africa where there was snow on Table Mountain in the middle of summer?? (missing the point I know).

I also grew up in South Africa and at the time of Band Aid I was at university and was an admirer of the song because of the effort being made for the famine and awareness of the issues. Looking back now of course the lyrics are just terrible, and I don't think it should be played any more except as a period piece, but it was something culturally important at the time.

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?

Wow. And you accuse the song of being patronising

@Mef82

For me, growing up in a small town in the west of Ireland, in the 80s, pre internet, where news was delivered only via parents insisting on turning off Whatever drivel we were watching to watch six o’clock news, this song and Live Aid meant something that you could never replicate now in this much smaller world we live in. First those horrific reports - Before my experience of human suffering had been the Trocaire box through the door at Lent (to be filled with coins and sent back to feed the poor). Then those live reports, then having a chance to do something by buying that record, sitting up all Day:night Watching live aid And phoning the donation line to pledge A few pounds, then walking to the local bank and giving the donation the next day. For me, it was a kind of an awakening and there’s no way to translate that experience into 2020 ideology. The song lyrics are bad but the whole experience was much more important in allowing people to take action in a way that is taken for granted today.

Well put. Trying to explain how this song and the video opened my cushy lifestyle eyes to what was happening in other countries cant be explained easily now.

"The past is another country, they do things differently there" comes to mind. But this song, patronising as it looks now, opened the way to a lot of people actually seeing the world as it really was/is