The video opens with two men in white Hazmat suits entering a dark, sparsely furnished room with concrete walls. The camera follows them to a bedroom, where an emaciated African woman lies still on a bare mattress. The scene ends with the two men lifting her limp body up by the wrists and ankles and carrying her away. The only sound is the slow inhale and exhale of the mens’ protective masks.
Cut to the next scene: paparazzi have gathered to snap pictures of U.K. mega stars such as Rita Ora, One Direction and Bono as they enter a London studio for the 30th anniversary rerecording of Bob Geldof’s controversial charity single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?
The opening scene of this music video represents the stereotypical image of Africa that this song has perpetuated throughout its history – first about the crisis in Ethiopia in 1984, and now the Ebola virus that has affected nearly 6,000 people in West Africa.
On the surface, a group of wealthy, prominent musicians coming together to lend their talents to a song like Do They Know It’s Christmas? to raise money to help fight Ebola seems like a wonderful idea.
It’s an illness that has affected many lives beyond the thousands it has claimed. But the song’s presentations of the cause and of African people are both hugely problematic, adding it to the long list of Western charity efforts gone wrong.
Ebola currently affects only five countries in Africa: Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Mali.
Although the region affected by the virus is extremely small compared to the 54 countries that make up the continent, the song still addresses Africa not as a diverse continent, but as one, big country devastated by the disease.
Dr. Pius Adesanmi, a Carleton University professor and author of You’re Not A Country, Africa, says this lumping together of Africa is problematic because it ignores the individual identities of Africa’s 54 countries.
“Consider the example of America’s gun epidemic and its associated culture of violence…would it be legitimate to start a Save the American continent campaign and subsume the national identities of Canada and Mexico within a gangrene that is specific to the United States of America?” he says.
Presenting Africa as one country works well for Western charity efforts, because it perpetuates the existing stereotype of African people as victims.
Dr. Rita Abrahamsen, a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, says African people are always presented as a passive people, either by sitting around as victims of Ebola, or waiting for “some lovely, white, fading rock star to come riding in on his shining horse and save them.”
This stereotype is so prevalent, Adesanmi says, that Nigeria’s quick response and containment of the disease – compared with America’s paranoia when faced with the same problem – was silenced because of the need to advance the narrative of an Africa canvassed by Ebola-induced trauma and misery.
This narrative is also apparent in the new lyrics, which were changed to directly address the Ebola crisis.
One line in particular has caused outrage among scholars like Adesanmi and Abrahamsen: “There’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear, where a kiss of love can kill you, and there’s death in every tear.”
Abrahamsen is adamant that Africa is not a place of dread and fear.
In fact, she says she believes the people of Africa live, love and laugh “probably more than they do in Canada or Europe.”
The title of the song itself is also extremely problematic.
According to the latest round of the Afrobarometer surveys, 87 per cent of Liberians and 46 per cent of Sierra Leoneans identify as Christians.
To answer your question, Geldof, despite the lack of snow and Western traditions, many African people do know it’s Christmas.
Though the popularity of the song may raise some much-needed funds for the treatment of Ebola, the effect of the stereotypes presented in Do They Know It’s Christmas? will, unfortunately, long outlast the song’s shelf life on the pop charts.
Adesanmi points to the paranoid travel advisories of Western governments as a prime example.
“When you are told not to travel in Africa because of Ebola, countries that are not affected by Ebola will lose business, travel, and other important sources of revenue,” he says.
Those who purchase the song cannot even be certain their money will be used to help find a cure for the virus, as the Band Aid website lists no specific organizations that will receive the profits from sales of the single.
So the stereotypes of African people perpetuated by Western charity efforts live on, and those affected by Ebola may never see the money Do They Know Its Christmas? raised.
But do the good intentions of Band Aid, the artists, and Geldof outweigh the problems presented by the song?
“What is it they say?” Abrahamsen replies when asked that question. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”