About once every week I go and visit a house full of boys that I lived with last year. They DO make fun of me for taking women studies, being a feminist and above all telling them what I learn in class. But in their defence they have all taken intervention and mediation training on sexual assault. The only channel that really exists at their house, sadly, is mtv canada, and to my HORROR there was the worst...'public service announcement' I have ever witnessed in my life. It was put on by equalityrules. What happens is a girl of visible minority walks into a 'unidentified fast food chain' to order a double cheeseburger, and the service personnel a pimply narly nasty boy sneers at her telling her that she can't and shouldn't eat such shit because she looks horrible anyways. The girl then walks over to the next service personnel and orders an even larger burger. Then two slides show "It's not okay here........not okay from your boyfriend". At first I was like WHAT?!!?!?!??! I hope to God this is NOT a public service announcement. Then one of my friends turned to me jokingly and said, "YAH [insert my name here]!" as in, you should take something away from this message!!!
This 'public service announcement' is ineffective two fold: 1. Baudrillard says that such created scnarios and images are useless/hyperreal unless significantly reflected upon and 2. This 'public service announcement' (PSA) was over-dramaticized that it makes you think only boys can verbally abuse girls, AND it has to be a boy who is hitting puberty and not easy on the eye at all. Also, the 'proper' response as dictated by the PSA is, not John's lovely outline of getting out of the box, but just ignoring verbal abuse and not teaching the abuser how to NOT verbally abuse. This 'public service announcement' IS hyper-real because it is completely unbelievable even if you reflect on it. Although maybe an attempt of the organization to make a provisional interruption this interruption distorts our views of verbal abuse as being only a male to female interaction. Whereas I am positive that verbal abuse between females is much more common and detrimental (ie) calling each other sluts, whores, cunts, bitches, fat etc; this was demonstrated in mass culture with Meangirls. These hyper-real PSAs are what distorts people's interpellation to assault 'culture' that creepy men in trenches jumping out of bushes, and gross pimply boys are the only ones who committ abuse or assault. What is up with that?
Kipnis, Baudrillard, Althusser
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