Total Pageviews

Wednesday 2 March 2016

Fantastic Voyage : OGR #1

1 comment:

  1. OGR 03/03/2016

    Hi Sarah,

    Okay - it's obviously early days in terms of the project, and you've got some evocative starting point thumbnails here. You've chosen HIV and you're right, educating young teens about this virus should be a priority. That said, in choosing HIV, you've got to treat the subject matter with some sensitivity; it would do no good to scare your audience to death re. sex and it would be no good at all to further stigmatise people who are living with HIV, so in this instance, the idea of the virus as a terrifying death-dealing monster to be loathed and feared is obviously problematic too. Perhaps one way of looking at it might be to use the fear factor as the entry point of your animation - so we are indeed being told a terrible story about 'a dragon' or whatever - but as the animation continues and concludes we end up in a more rational place. I just think demonising the HIV virus poses problems, and this is because of the viruse's social history, when it was referred to, for instance, as 'a gay plague' and as a punishment from God etc. I guess what I'm saying is that you need to really think what the message of your animation is going to be: if it's simply about the life-cycle of HIV you want to guard against transmitting fearfulness as the 'outcome'. You might want to consider researching into the advice around what happens when you discover you're HIV positive and survival rates etc, because I imagine if you were teaching the subject to teens, you'd a) want to show them how the disease does what it does, but b) want to reassure them that a diagnosis of HIV doesn't mean a death sentence. HIV is a tough choice in this respect.

    Put more simply still then, perhaps you can make 'fear of HIV' as your frame narrative (folklores about terrible monsters etc) and then use the film to educate and reassure and promote safe sex etc? Let me know what you think.

    ReplyDelete