segunda-feira, 7 de setembro de 2009

the ugly

One of five Romanians has already met or will meet "The Ugly" at least once in their lifetime. Neagu Djuvara or Mihaela Miroiu have encountered one of these meetings. You can see and hear their and other heroes' story now. Why heroes? Because their stories are real and full of courage. It happens for the first time in Romania: The ones who have met the Ugly are speaking publicly about it.

Listen with an open mind. Learn.

Follow this link. Each wallpaper hides a story. All stories have English subtitles.

A coproduction The Carter Center and Deutsche Welle

Thank you ecila for allowing me to post on your wonderful blog! - jellyfish

5 comentários:

ntozei disse...

I loved the videos. It's so true and realistic. When you got depression you feel afraid to talk about that, cause you don't want to be seen as a boring person or as a crazy one. And you don't wanna hurt anybody (making them worry about your problems). You don't wanna hear that you are an intelligent person and only have to change your way to view the world - like it was that simple! We should always try to make them search for professional help. And I'm no speaking only about medication.

I could speak a lot about that... but I'm only gonna thank you for the videos!

Nayara

jellyfish disse...

I am glad you liked it! I think it is a wondeful step forward for Romanian society, but not only. I hope this campaign will be successful and will teach many people about what depression really is and about how we should all deal with it.

I was impressed with the fact that people said that they needed love and acceptance most. It was a big motif troughout several of the videos.

ntozei disse...

"(...)people said that they needed love and acceptance most"

Yeah! It's impressive but I think that may be related to the fact that depression is like a "tabu". Some just see that as a problem of rich people. Some just got in panic (figuratively talking) when a beloved one talks about death, suicide or profound suffer. Some just diminish other's people problems, like if they weren't important at all.

The non-depressive ones just don't know how to deal with the situation, cause these situation isn't well explored in the media, at least in Brazil. To lose the will to live can have different motivations and that can be seen in the so different kinds of suicide notes. There's little space to talk and initiatives like that can break the frontier of the 'tabu' and help people talk about their problems, and help people help other people with no fear of getting depressed too.

jellyfish disse...

I absolutely agree!

I think media campaigns are a very powerful means, as they reach many people, they present things in a very "consumer-oriented" way (i.e. as much of the most important information possible concentrated in little time).

I especially like how people in Romania were primed with the words "the Ugly is coming" many times with different ads and that built up a lot of tension and expectations, which drew attention on the project. Very good marketing.

I am very happy that this is happening in Romania and hopefully soon in other countries as well. If (like in this project) prominent persons appear, it will even increase the power of the message.

ntozei disse...

Jellyfish, the fact that it is on the net helps a lot. Let's hope the ideas spread away. =]

"The Ugly is coming" thing was an interesting point about bringing up expectations and breaking the wrong ones.