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You cannot get through the holiday season without hearing the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. Originally released in 1984 by Band Aid to raise funds to fight the famine in Ethiopia, the song has now become synonymous with Christmas. Spearheaded by celebrity, Bob Geldof, Band Aid brought together dozens of popular artists to record a charity single with all proceeds going to famine relief efforts. Their hit song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” attracted huge media coverage and public interest, becoming both the fastest-selling and best-selling single of all time, and raising millions of pounds for Ethiopia.
The catchy tune may seem like a harmless and heartwarming song, but the lyrics, music video and whole campaign paint a very problematic representation of “Africa.” Relying heavily on simplistic and graphic images of starving African children as a way to shock and capture the attention of the public, Band Aid presented Africans as objects of pity to be saved through the kindness of Western donors and celebrities. The huge audience and eye-catching nature of the campaign consolidates a colonialist view of the global South as helpless, passive, desperate, and dependent upon the benevolent charity of the global North. The line "Tonight, thank God, it's them instead of you”, sums up the binary division between “us”, the rich benevolent North, and “the other”, the poor global South that the song instils. This representation has been instrumental in establishing a hegemonic culture of humanitarianism in which moral responsibility towards impoverished parts of an imagined Africa is based on pity rather than the demand for justice and systemic change.
In writing this song, Band Aid failed to address the complexities of the situation. The public bought into ostentatious acts of virtue, and was sold a simplistic vision that argued “they are hungry so let’s buy them food”. This form of marketised philanthropy was highly effective at accumulating public donations, but it did so by shunning overt engagement with the underlying causes of global hunger and poverty. Consequently, Band Aid seemed to always be more concerned with global spectacle and consumer gratification than it was with challenging the underlying political causes of the famine. Utilizing the mass appeal of music, pop-culture, celebrities and a globalised media platform to build an extra-parliamentary social movement, Band Aid both reflected and reinforced an ongoing shift in the legitimacy of charity and welfare, away from state-led welfare solutions towards more individualised and market-driven forms of action articulated through the realms of capitalist consumption and mass culture.
This shift portrays third world aid as a fashionable cause, rockstars as political figures and donating to Africa as doing good and being moral. As a result, the public could participate in redemptive acts of good by simply watching television, purchasing a record or attending a concert by their favourite musician. This commodified human suffering and obscured the inequalities inherent to the functioning of global capitalism. Sadly, the song’s influence echoes through our politics and social discourse and symbolizes the core values that many in our alienated and fractured society uphold.
The images of emaciated children staring at the ground, as poignant music plays in the background, have not changed, nor have inducements to give "just £1 a day” to save someone who is less fortunate than ourselves. The fact that the song has been remade and re-recorded three times since its original release shows the continuing conviction that global poverty is something to be solved with paternalistic charity, rather than shifting the narrative and looking at the root-causes of these problems. So much good can come from cooperation across borders and the coming together of people to solve global injustices and struggles. But the intention to do good cannot be a shield to deflect criticism. That image of poverty and famine is extremely powerful psychologically, and decades of such imagery being pumped out through campaigns like Band Aid, has made the average Westerner more likely to donate £1 a day or buy a hit charity single, than want to go on holiday to, or invest in Africa. If you are reading this and haven’t been anywhere in Africa, ask yourself why.
Decades of the song has not only affected the country of Ethiopia but the entire continent. Unintended legacies have hindered investment, tourism and positive images of Africa as a whole. The lyrics "No rain or rivers flow", paint Africa as a destitute, under-developed, helpless place, forgetting that Africa is home to the Nile, one of the longest rivers in the world and is one of the most ecologically diverse continents on the planet. Moreover, six out of ten of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa. Africa is a vibrant, diverse, cultural and resource-rich continent.
Yes, initiatives that raise money to respond to an underfunded disaster are welcome, but celebrities should not be hogging the media coverage and drowning out accurate critical voices of those who are directly affected.
I, like many others, am sick of the whole concept of Africa - a resource-rich continent with unbridled potential - always being seen as poverty-stricken, diseased, dangerous and in need of saving.