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?

This is brilliant:
Radi-Aid :Africa for Norway

"But assertions that a text means something quite outside of what it says, or what it's context would suggest, in the fashion you've suggested, is basically a kind of mental masturbation. It can give you a nice little topic for a thesis, or bolster a viewpoint you already want to hold, or be used to make a cheap joke of something. All of which are self-serving."

I can understand your irritation but don't feel it to the same degree you do. To me it's just a tradition like Wicked viewing Oz from a different perspective or Maleficent looking at Sleeping Beauty another way.

Of course those are new stories based on reinterpreting old ones but the principle is the same, finding a different way of interpreting events from the one intended by the author. Of course, not being Christian probably helps me in that respect.

When it comes to the song I actually like it. I appreciate the words are pretty naff but I think it's got a really great tune and for all its faults (which have been pointed out repeatedly) you can't ignore how revolutionary it was socially and what it achieved. So many of the criticisms seem remarkably petty and blinkered.

“Obviously never heard of Mount Kilimanjaro when they wrote those lyrics”

It was always a ridiculous song but with a very catchy tune.

[quote pisspants]This is brilliant:
Radi-Aid :Africa for Norway

[/quote] The point of which will doubtless go straight over the head of many on here. I bet certain posters are already ordering their radi-aid t-shirts.

I suspect most of the hand wringers on here aren't even old enough to remember that news report and the horrific images. If they were they wouldn't be so bloody scornful and resentful about two men's efforts to do something to help those people. Perhaps the whiners on here would prefer it if we had all turned a blind eye instead?

As for all the "my dh/partner/best friend/ Mother's second cousin/ is African and is offended" so bloody what? They dont speak for the starving Ethiopians of 1984. People get offended about all sorts every single day - in fact it's become a bloody national sport now!

@missyB1

I suspect most of the hand wringers on here aren't even old enough to remember that news report and the horrific images. If they were they wouldn't be so bloody scornful and resentful about two men's efforts to do something to help those people. Perhaps the whiners on here would prefer it if we had all turned a blind eye instead

As for all the "my dh/partner/best friend/ Mother's second cousin/ is African and is offended" so bloody what? They dont speak for the starving Ethiopians of 1984. People get offended about all sorts every single day - in fact it's become a bloody national sport now

Spot on

Its a song - how crazy to suggest it is reality - folk songs from 100 years ago are mostly about social injustice, rape, slavery etc - do we ban all these? How totally barking mad!

@UrAWizHarry that's hilarious!

"The point of which will doubtless go straight over the head of many on here. I bet certain posters are already ordering their radi-aid t-shirts."

No, it won't go over anyone's heads. Your assumption that we're a bunch of fools says more about your prejudices than ours.

The clip is funny and they have a point about overall attitudes to the African continent but the crucial difference is Norwegians weren't starving to death and some Africans were and we could watch their misery from the comfort of our armchairs on TV.

It's easy to criticise so-called white saviours but the people from this country (white, black and Asian) who gave money really did save people. A saviour of any kind is better than none at all and criticisms of white people doing their best can be as racist as the racism they think they are criticising.

@missyB1

I suspect most of the hand wringers on here aren't even old enough to remember that news report and the horrific images. If they were they wouldn't be so bloody scornful and resentful about two men's efforts to do something to help those people. Perhaps the whiners on here would prefer it if we had all turned a blind eye instead?

As for all the "my dh/partner/best friend/ Mother's second cousin/ is African and is offended" so bloody what? They dont speak for the starving Ethiopians of 1984. People get offended about all sorts every single day - in fact it's become a bloody national sport now!

Yup.

It seems outdated now.

@missyB1

I suspect most of the hand wringers on here aren't even old enough to remember that news report and the horrific images. If they were they wouldn't be so bloody scornful and resentful about two men's efforts to do something to help those people. Perhaps the whiners on here would prefer it if we had all turned a blind eye instead?

As for all the "my dh/partner/best friend/ Mother's second cousin/ is African and is offended" so bloody what? They dont speak for the starving Ethiopians of 1984. People get offended about all sorts every single day - in fact it's become a bloody national sport now!

Well I am old enough, at 64. And I thought the lyrics were appalling, condescending and ignorant back then, too.

I'm not saying Band Aid wasn't an achievement. It was. But this thread is about the song. It's a crap song, it's insulting to Africa and it's an embarassment.

"Well I am old enough, at 64. And I thought the lyrics were appalling, condescending and ignorant back then, too."

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

You would really describe those words as appalling, condescending and ignorant? That seems like ridiculous hyperbole.

As far as I can see the big crime of the lyrics is that they don't distinguish between those parts of Africa where there wasn't rain, where things weren't growing and where people were dying of starvation in huge numbers and those other parts of the continent where things weren't so desperate. A cause of irritation I'm sure to many Africans but 'appalling' given Ure and Geldof's aim in writing those words is ridiculous. There is such a things as poetic licence after all.

@missyB1 yeah agree. This sing and The Cars takes me straight back to the news reports...

Well, there’s civil war in Ethiopia, Yemen is starving and the Horn of Africa as a whole is facing famine, what with locusts and Covid.
Let’s not interfere. Or talk about it, let alone try and raise money.

@Alexafrost

"But assertions that a text means something quite outside of what it says, or what it's context would suggest, in the fashion you've suggested, is basically a kind of mental masturbation. It can give you a nice little topic for a thesis, or bolster a viewpoint you already want to hold, or be used to make a cheap joke of something. All of which are self-serving."

I can understand your irritation but don't feel it to the same degree you do. To me it's just a tradition like Wicked viewing Oz from a different perspective or Maleficent looking at Sleeping Beauty another way.

Of course those are new stories based on reinterpreting old ones but the principle is the same, finding a different way of interpreting events from the one intended by the author. Of course, not being Christian probably helps me in that respect.

When it comes to the song I actually like it. I appreciate the words are pretty naff but I think it's got a really great tune and for all its faults (which have been pointed out repeatedly) you can't ignore how revolutionary it was socially and what it achieved. So many of the criticisms seem remarkably petty and blinkered.

There is a huge difference between taking a story and doing something else creative with it, and claiming to do some kind of textual criticism. It has zero to do with any particular religious POV. The first is like a sci-fi book being free using speculations on scientific question to create a story - maybe quite a good one - and the second is like selling pseudo-science products to line your pockets.

I agree that most of the criticisms have been petty. (Though I don't really love the song personally it does has a nostalgia factor and I don't mind hearing it on the radio on occasion.) It's funny that people will accept much older poetry or literature or song lyrics that contain ideas that we now know are untrue in some sense, but we accept that people at the time had a different perspective. But somehow they are incapable or realising that can also apply to things that happened a generation ago.

And the inability to understand literary mechanisms like metaphor or similes is very odd.

watch this and tell me what you would have done?

Every time it,s played it collects royalties and that still goes to charity. The charity itself has made mistakes in the past but show me one that hasn,t.