There is more that unites us than divides us
Idon’t think I saw the ad in 2017, when I believe it was first released, which seems strange to me now. I feel like the message would have resonated deeply, stayed with me.
If I did see it, I simply can’t have given it the attention it warrants now that I’ve had a close look.
Hey, it’s an ad, right? They’re not noted for incisive social commentary.
They’re noted for pushing vested interests, especially in an election year, which it was in 2017 and is in 2020.
Anyway, aren’t they 30-second interludes into our viewing that have progressively less impact the more we see them?
Case in point, the Mitre 10 ad with the kids in the sandpit. Remember? The ‘‘Aussies . . .’’ ‘‘No surprises there’’ commercial that had people chuckling knowingly the length and breadth of the country?
Of course you do. I saw an updated pic of the two Kiwi heroes of that trans-Tasman takedown the other week, and they’re grownups. Crazy, eh?
I wouldn’t have seen the ad I’m talking about here on TV, because it was made in Denmark, but I believe it was widely shared via social media at the time. It wasn’t 30 seconds long, either, more like three minutes.
Those things aside, it feels important to me.
I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head which company or service it’s advertising, but nevertheless the message has hit home powerfully.
I’ve checked. It’s for Denmark’s TV2, and it’s called All That We Share. It figures that a TV channel would want to accentuate the things we have in common, rather than those that separate us. Viewership figures and all that.
But this ad does it particularly well.
It starts from the sort of groups that sometimes seem to define us; the us and them, like high earners and those just getting by . . . almost tantamount to a grouping along class lines; working class, middle class, upper class.
In the political context of 2020, and the kind of tribalised discussion that I often see online, we could easily be talking Left wing and Right wing, as though they’re two clearly defined entities at either end of a continuum with tumbleweed blowing through the uninhabited Centre.
There are categories for ‘‘those we trust’’, like nurses, and ‘‘those we try to avoid’’.
I couldn’t see a journalist at first glance there, among the muscles and tattoos and jaded expressions, but surveys tell me that’s where I’d have had to stand.
Then, as this simple exercise unfolds, things get more interesting.
A facilitator asks participants to come forward if they fit certain characteristics.
It starts with those who were known as the class clown at school, then moves on to those who are step-parents, who love to dance, and on it goes.
Predictably these draw people from across the ‘‘defining’’ groupings they started out in. There’s the suit-clad bald man, and the musclebound, tattooed, middleaged guy whom many will probably look at and think ‘‘gang member’’. It was my first thought.
As the exercise continues, the groupings become more diverse; those who are in love, those who feel lonely, those who’ve been bullied, those who have been bullies.
Some of the categories, like that last one, are confronting.
And some, like both the pairings in that previous paragraph, are two sides of the same coin.
In many cases, those in one will have been in its pair at some point.
Plainly, there’s a fair amount of editing involved.
The overall message of the exercise, though – and it’s such an important one – is that there is so much more that unites us than
So many of our prejudices are born of ignorance, often by lazily co-opting those that others close to us hold, without properly interrogating them.
divides us.
The human condition, the mundane realities of life, the conflict, the joy, the pain, the challenges of parenting, the list goes on – the exact circumstances of these things vary from person to person, but they are things many of us share, no matter our socioeconomic status, our education, our ethnicity or our place of birth.
It reinforces a point that has come back to me repeatedly in the past year.
So many of our prejudices are born of ignorance, often by lazily co-opting those that others close to us hold, without properly interrogating them.
But there is no better solution to prejudice than actually getting to know people.
SPOILER ALERT
If you haven’t seen it, but it’s a message beautifully conveyed in the movie for which Taika Waititi has just won an Oscar, Jojo Rabbit. It charts Jojo’s journey from an indoctrinated 10-year-old member of the Hitler Youth to an understanding of the absurdity of the Nazi view of Jews.
And it happens through getting to know the young Jewish girl his mother has hidden in their attic.
I’ve seen a few people rail against the increasing diversification of our society, as though it’s somehow an unnatural process.
It’s not. What’s unnatural is trying to stick to our own to the exclusion of others in an increasingly multicultural society.
I repeat, there is no substitute for actually knowing people. In this year of all years, we need to put aside our fear, because that’s what keeps us separate, and replace it with openness, acceptance and understanding.