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?

As a person who lives in the Southern Hemisphere the line about snow has always seemed stupid. Parts of the continent of Africa are in the Southern Hemisphere and its summer. Why would there be fucking snow in summer? Surely it would be more of an issue if there was snow!!

sterotyping over a billion people as ignorant charity cases

How fucking offensive

There was no stereotyping of people as "ignorant charity cases " but as ordinary people in need. There is no shame in needing help / charity sometimes. I would rather someone said here have this blanket and I could say no than to freeze waiting for support whilst people faff around getting their language correct.

I have have misinterpreted you, then take that as evidence as to how hard it can be to get language right!

It's easy to criticise the song now but at the time no one was in any doubt that it was about the famine in Ethiopia. They weren't assuming that everywhere in Africa was the same just because of a lyric in a song as Ethiopian was in the news all the time . They probably should have said Ethiopian rather than Africa but people wouldn't be happy with that either nowadays. I think you have to look at the song in the context of which it was written which was very quickly at a time when something needed to be done urgently. There hadn't been anything like live aid or band aid before.

There is snow on Kilimanjaro...we know that. There is rarely snow on the uk at Christmas, we know that.

Are you going to ban all poetry next?

I means "season of mist and mellow fruitfulness ..."

Well not all autumns are like that in all parts of the world. And it could be hurtful to people whose harvest has failed if people elsewhere have poetry about a rich harvest couldn't it?

@midgebabe

sterotyping over a billion people as ignorant charity cases

How fucking offensive

There was no stereotyping of people as "ignorant charity cases " but as ordinary people in need. There is no shame in needing help / charity sometimes. I would rather someone said here have this blanket and I could say no than to freeze waiting for support whilst people faff around getting their language correct.

I have have misinterpreted you, then take that as evidence as to how hard it can be to get language right!

That's exactly what the lyrics of band aid do.

It served a purpose at the time, but now, in an age where we can access information immediately there are better ways of getting a message accros than fucking bono - a persistent tax evader - belting a tasteless platitude out.

@SockYarn

YABU mentioning that hideous "C-word" in June.

I think Midge Ure, who wrote that song, said he rattled it off in 5 minutes after a call from Geldof , that it wasn't his best work and he really never imagined it'd be around so long.

YABU being a bit disingenuous about the lyrics - I was 12 in 1984 and those pictures of Michael Buerk's reports from the Ethiopian famine are burned into my brain. Nothing was growing. People were dying by the bucketload. That song was directly in response to that particular situation, and it did the job by raising millions.

This times a million. It's an iconic song and it's part of our own heritage now.

The lyrics seemed ridiculous to me at the time, never mind now. It did raise both money and awareness, so it had a benefit, but I'd be happy to never hear it again. Same with most Christmas songs actually

they stereotype as ignorant charity cases...show me that line please?

And Paul Weller can fuck off too. Bumping his gums because it was beneath his dignity, and giving pop stars the side eye. Pompous nobber.

@paganbilly
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.

The OP has - if you read it there's a lot of posts from her.

Its so patronising :(

"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"."

OK, what have you done in any way comparable?

"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."

But they did help the situation terribly much despite the flaws in the lyrics.

white-person-buying-a-single-and-going-awww-the-poor-children

You think only white people bought the single? You think purchasers weren't genuinely horrified by the famine?

I wasn't aware that the song still raises money for charity. In that case beneficiaries of those projects should decide whether the song should be retired.

@Nonamesavail

Its so patronising :(

Least of their fucking problems, to be quite honest.

So white people should not do anything to help the starving in Africa ?

I think it seems patronising today on some levels .However lets not forget that many people still have crops that dont yield,serious illnesses (Polio is still in Africa) and even in UK, are going to Food Banks, and going without heat in order to eat properly .At the time it was produced we were shocked and appalled by the famine in Ethopia.It has raised millions of pounds to help a very worthwhile cause, and raised the profile of starving millions of people far more than rattling a tin on the street corner ever could!

@Quillink

white-person-buying-a-single-and-going-awww-the-poor-children

You think only white people bought the single? You think purchasers weren't genuinely horrified by the famine?

I wasn't aware that the song still raises money for charity. In that case beneficiaries of those projects should decide whether the song should be retired.

How much it helped back in 1985 is very much debatable, given how how much of the food and money that was delivered to Ethiopia was seized, sold to buy arms and used to feed Mengistu's army. But let's not let inconvient facts like that get in the way.

It's too easy just to blindly chuck money at a problem and assume that is going to help. It's easy to write lyrics implying that there is no rain, that nothing grows and that nobody knows about christmas, and for people to go "oh, but it's all a metaphor". Life isn't that simple, and that's all people need to understand and maybe accept that band aid belongs in the past.

Boinboing I think you're utterly wrong.
It will never be right to denigrate the good hearted efforts of people to actually save lives.
It will never be right to elevate trendy talking points over real people's real suffering.

Let's never do anything to help anyone today, in case in 30 years people have the found the One True And Correct Way to alleviate all human suffering. In the meantime, however...?

Anyway since watching the doc about how they made it, I love to revel in the knowledge in them passive aggressively fighting over the glory line, and of course Bono prevailing

WELL TONIGHT THANK GOD ITS THEM INSTEAD OF YOU

Is matched only by Noddy Holder himself for Christmas nostalgia. Bloody love it.

Boy George! Voice of an angel. And Bananarama clearly hungover. Legends.

@BunnyMacDougal I agree. Here is another pic, which a great many people would be very well aware is of "Africa"... things have moved on since the 1980s

If the woke try to take these memories away from me I will personally join Nigel Farage, Piers Morgan and that prick from Dollar in a Save The Eighties run for parliament.

We can only do, what we can do, in the time when we do it. The song is 40 years old. It's ancient and so should be viewed through the lens of history and social understanding at the time.

Yet again I find myself wondering what every day acts some posters do right now, believing they are doing good, that will be judged harshly in 40 years time. Future generations calling us ignorant, patronising fools for something we do today that will no longer be socially aceptable in 40 years time.

Things change. What is acceptable changes like the wind. What was acceptable yesterday is not today and what is acceptable today will not be tomorrow.

How much it helped back in 1985 is very much debatable, given how how much of the food and money that was delivered to Ethiopia was seized, sold to buy arms and used to feed Mengistu's army. But let's not let inconvient facts like that get in the way.

They couldn't have predicted that in advance though could they? Do you think they should have done and therefore not done anything to try and help?

It's too easy just to blindly chuck money at a problem and assume that is going to help. It's easy to write lyrics implying that there is no rain, that nothing grows and that nobody knows about christmas, and for people to go "oh, but it's all a metaphor". Life isn't that simple, and that's all people need to understand and maybe accept that band aid belongs in the past.

It's easy to criticise when you haven't done anything to help yourself. They didn't just write lyrics. They did a lot to raise money to try and help. No one had done anything like that before. Incredibly mean spirited and ignorant to slag them off for it.

Most songs date. It raised a lot of money and awareness at the time.
Agree it's jarring now, if you analyse the lyrics, but I can't get excited about it.

Far more annoyed by the Beatles lyrics: "I'd rather see you dead little girl than see you with another man".