BECAUSE WE'RE WORTH IT... AND THEY'RE NOT
Featured in Remedy Issue 6
By Farhana NIcholson
I was watching a documentary about slums, and how people have to live to survive, it highlighted to me just how powerful the TV is. I had no idea just how bad the situation is. This TV screen was showing me in great detail just what is happening, and that we in the west are so privileged and there is a lot we could be doing to help. Just then came an add break, a bombardment of plastic faced women telling me I deserve to have shiny hair, longer lashes and baby like skin ‘because I’m worth it”. It just felt so wrong, this TV screen was giving me completely contradicting messages. One minute I’m shown a women forced to work in a landfill so that she can put her children through school, the next I’m being told my eyes should be perfectly lined with thicker lashes and that I should be worrying about wrinkles! We have such a powerful communicative tool, what are we doing with it? Enforcing hiding behind fickle ideals rather then encouraging each other to look at how easily we could help others.
A child dies every 15 seconds in the slums, but my lips can stay glossy for up to 24hours.
We need a Remedy!
www.remedymag.co.uk
WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE FAMOUS
Featured in Remedy magazine Issue 6
By Farhana Nicholson
Over 30% of Primary school children in Britain assume they will be famous when they grow up. Over 50% of 16-19 year olds want to be famous, less then a quarter of them say they are going to use a talent to achieve this. The rest say they will achieve fame through reality TV shows like Big Brother.
We need a Remedy!
If we go back just 40 years, in the 60’s when TV was black and white, you would only see people with actual talent in the public eye like writers, artist, actors and actresses, dancers etc. In fact it was always like that, even before TV. During Victorian times people like poets, painters, scientist and doctors were celebrated and promoted in the public. And we certainly would not still be celebrating people like Michelangelo if all we did was sit around doing nothing all day. We have always looked up to talent and aspired to achieving it.
Fast forward to the year 2000 where we are introduced to a new brand of ‘celebrity’ through Big Brother. It was challenging morality and privacy, which was both shocking and thrilling at the same time. Suddenly, here was a group of people on our TV screens with no talent, no glamour and a complete lack of inhibition. We felt these were REAL people that we could relate to. But as soon as they left the Big Brother house, they were launched into fame and money.
Suddenly anyone could be rich and famous and we became obsessed with it.
For the following 10 years to the present day we are bombarded with reality TV shows churning out even more ‘celebrities‘ with no talent or positive attributes for our society. And as a result, our aspirations have hit an all time low. People are out purely to seek fame and fortune, and do not care about how they will attain it. It’s a parasite on young peoples self esteem, there is little or no encouragement to achieve higher education and discover our talents and be proud of them. Or to be satisfied with what we have and live within our means. We want everyone to know and like us and to be filthy rich, then we will be happy. The sad thing is that we can all name ‘celebrities’ who have all of that and are constantly in and out of rehab or have even taken their own lives.
The meaning of the word fame has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, it has completely lost it’s integrity, to be famous once meant that you were well known for your talent or because you had achieved something incredible, like Martin Luther King, Florence Nightingale and Mahatma Gandhi. The word came with respect and credibility. Now fame is immediately associated to being a celebrity, it’s cheap and lacks merit. Lets bring back it’s original meaning, as fame and money are not bad things, it is what you do with it and how you gain and attain it that can be destructive. In it’s original context, fame can help spread an incredible message across the world and money can save lives.
This is why we are Remedy. We promote people with talent and principles. We recognise our responsibility as creatives in the media and are constantly working for an even better tomorrow for future generations. We want to encourage everyone to challenge what you see and hear in the media and to champion all that helps you progress.
www.remedymag.co.uk
