Africa Is a Country

#Kony2012 the musical

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

#Kony2012 the musical

By
Sean Jacobs

We want to step off #Kony2012 (we promise to lay off them by this weekend), but we could not let this one pass. We know that Jason wants a career in musical theater. The writers of British broadcaster and satirist Charlie Brooker’s nightlyweekly commentary on Channel 4’s weekly satire show ’10 O’Clock Live’ spent some time looking at Invisible Children’s videos on Vimeo and Youtube and found plenty musical theater among the 274 videos (at last count) the group has posted online.

The first video, 2006’s “Global Night Commute: A Musical to Believe” shows Jason (described by Brooker as “a clean-cut Abercrombie and Finch version of Jesus Christ”) and company “dancing around Glee-like in a high school like a boy band.” Brooker adds that the video “must have cost what even the Bible would describe as a bumload of cash.” Watch from the 1:40 mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWACLKaOC08

Then there’s the 2007 “World Tour Blazing Trials Again” showing actors riding around on a minivan miming to pop lyrics “without a single mention of Africa the entire four minutes.”

Next up is “Jump First, Fear Later” from 2009, “a cult like video” with their followers leaping “like a lemming pack” off a cliff, which, “once again cleverly raises awareness of Uganda, by never once mentioning Uganda.”

And finally, “at least Invisible Children doesn’t also organise vaguely ominous youth camp events for its followers which hint at them all — I don’t know — rising up to usher in some kind of New World Order, all topped off with a sinister logo.” Uh-oh. This is Invisible Children’s “Fourth Estate”, complete with some kind of bizarre Australian-cum-English-cum-Californian accent doing the voiceover. (Is it Russell Crowe?) Help!

Watch Charlie Brooker’s full #Kony2012 commentary here.

H/T: Mikko Kapanen; Neelika Jayawardane and Elliot Ross contributed to this post.

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