Where Is The Blind Community's Protest Against The Blindness Viral Web Campaign?
Last week members of the blind community announced that they would be boycotting the movie Blindness (although how you boycott a movie no one cares about, I DON'T KNOW) because they thought that it promoted negative stereotypes against people with a serious disability. Sure. Although one of our commenters made the astute observation that if the entire world went blind instantly there would definitely be panic and chaos, which isn't a negative stereotype against blind people so much as a negative stereotype against pandemic outbreaks of debilitating diseases. But FAIR ENOUGH, blind community. OK.
But where is the outrage against the Blindness viral web campaign? This thing is horrible!
Located at iamblind.org, it features a Flickr stream of people wearing promotional Blindness dilation glasses. Wait, whuuuuuut? A movie takes millions of dollars to make, and much of that money goes towards promoting the movie. So with that much money at stake, every decision goes through a long line of bureaucratic decision making. Nevertheless, at no point did anyone say "Hey, you know what, let's NOT give out promotional dilation glasses to hype our movie about everyone going blind because maybe that actually IS offensive in some weird, tone deaf way, and regardless of its offensiveness at the very least it completely abandons the original novel's use of blindness as a humanistic metaphor." No one said that. Everyone just said "Totally, Kev, that's a great promotional gimmick. You know, because of eye doctors!"
And who are these people posting their pictures to this Flickr stream? "Oh man, check it out, I got these awesome promotional Blindness dilation glasses. I've gotta get a picture of myself on-line."
"What's Blindness?"
"I don't know, but these glasses are AWESOME. I can't wait to get a picture of myself out there in these bad boys. Aren't they awesome?"
"No."
The site also has short "viral" videos to promote the movie. Although I don't think your mom is going to be forwarding any of these to you any time soon. They don't even make any sense. This one is called "Justice Is Blind":
What? Because when you go blind while looking at a courthouse that means that justice is a lady screaming, because George W. Bush and also lions.
Oh, and just in case anyone in Hollywood is reading this: if you're going to make a viral video, it helps to allow people to embed and/or email the link around. Not that anyone wants to embed or email this video, but if for some reason they did. Just a pro-tip for you, Hollywood. You fucking idiot.
Posted by Gabe at 10:30 AM in Viral Marketing
Tags: Blindness | Jose Saramago | Julianne Moore | Mark Ruffalo
The worst part? Blindness actually is an ok movie.
Score = -1
Wait a minute, blind people are going to see this movie? What are they going to watch instead, nothing?
This is like when disabled rights groups said that they wouldn't stand for the portrayal of Lieut. Dan in Hollywood's Forrest Gump.
(I could probably spend a day doing this)
Score = 2
i dunno, i think they're kind of cool. Also, it's apparently part of some ARG. lighten up.
Score = 0
I have some stinker viral videos, but holy shit. What.
Score = 0
AAH earballs hurt
Score = 0
bravo, sir
Score = 0
OH MY GOD! Since when is death allowed on youtube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cnm83R_5QI
Score = 0