It
rarely occurs to me to watch TV on the Spanish channels. Not that
there's any problem at all with the language, my Spanish standard is
about the same as my English. It's just that with Sky satellite I have
more channels in English than I have time for; most of them I consider
rubbish anyway. When I got so fed up of not able to find anything
watchable a couple of nights ago, I turned to the Spanish channel, to
watch a film called 'Express'.
The
main actor in one scene of the film used his Visa card, casually and in
matter of fact fashion, sliced up some cocaine to be used. Five minutes
later, a brand new and excellently put together publicity 'sport' of
the governmental campaign was shown, warning youngsters of the danger of
drug use. The impact was sharp and cutting. The contrast of the two
short scenes, one immediately after another, gave out very conflicting
images to the audience, especially to the targeted youth to keep off
drugs.
The
actor in the film is Joel Joan, a well known & well loved star, a
modern idol of the young and the cool. A positive personality admired
and imitated, consciously or unconsciously, by many youths and some not
so young alike. His conduct, though portraying a fictional figure, not
exactly a hero but a 'goodie'in the story, could induce 2 reactions: or
the behaviour of the character is condemned to be inappropriate and the
actor loses his popularity, or the actor / character is so powerful that
his negative conduct is looked upon as normal, hip and fashionable. As
television reflects social habits as well as creates them.
I
might be over reacting a bit. It's just that it doesn't make good sense
to me to try to sensitise the public against the negative and damaging
effects of cocaine, and at the same time showing it's consumption as a
daily custom or habit of a favourite personality in public television.
Tags: DrugCampaign,TVPublicity
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