AfricaIs aCountry

The fear-riddled DNA

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The fear-riddled DNA

By
Tom Devriendt

A new ad for how DNA works feeds into a fear-riddled white South African state of mind about black crime and blacks-as-a-class as criminals.

Screen grabs from the video.

What was Egg Films thinking?  This award-winning South African production house, responsible for several corporate commercials and short films, created this video for ‘The DNA project’, a local not-for-profit company “… committed to advancing justice through the expanded use of DNA evidence in conjunction with a national DNA criminal intelligence database.”

The Project prides itself on making this ad which, they say, “creates conversation,” because “it is paradoxical: a cigarette saves lives in a commercial where the lead woman dies.”

Just watch. Here are the key frames you are primed for. A black man buys a box of cigarettes and murders a white (or coloured?) woman …

If any conversation ensues at all, I’ve got a feeling it will not be about its intended message to “never disturb a crime scene,” but rather about its framing which feeds into a fear-riddled white South African state of mind.

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