Simply For One Day, the Previous Vic’s new musical about Reside Assist, recreates the story behind the history-making live performance in a spectacle filled with iconic Nineteen Eighties rock anthems.
The script might really feel a bit clunky, however because it’s carried out in entrance of enthusiastic audiences largely made up of individuals sufficiently old to do not forget that heat July day in 1985, that is unlikely to be a sticking level.
Rocks star Bob Geldof and the generally forgotten Midge Ure gathered collectively the largest music acts of the time and persuaded them to play totally free in concurrent concert events, one at London’s Wembley area and one on the JFK stadium in Philadelphia. The concept was to lift cash to assist feed tens of millions of ravenous individuals in northern Ethiopia which was being ravaged by drought and famine.
These acts included David Bowie, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Queen, The Pretenders, Sade, U2, Diana Ross, Paul McCartney, Elton John and The Who, to call just some. Because the concert events beamed out to 150 international locations across the globe, the cash poured in, finally elevating US$140m (£114m).
Fairly like Reside Assist itself, the opinions for Simply For One Day have been decidedly combined. Whereas the Telegraph enthused that “even essentially the most hardened cynic will admire this rip-roaring retread”, and the Day by day Specific noticed it as a “celebration and reminder of what human beings can obtain”, a reasonably withering Guardian evaluation concludes it “piles homily on cliché in a manufacturing in thrall to white saviour stereotypes”. Metropolis AM goes one step additional by slamming the manufacturing as “shockingly tone-deaf”.
However the reality stays that Reside Assist was a world media spectacle. The occasion adopted the success of Geldof’s Band Assist December 1984 single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, recorded by a collective of largely British musical stars to lift cash for Ethiopia.
It confirmed charities simply how a lot celeb involvement may increase the profile of specific disasters and causes – and it confirmed celebrities how charity work may enhance their very own profiles. What many within the third sector have ruminated over ever since are the advantages and issues this sort of celeb affiliation brings with it.
Within the quick aftermath of Reside Assist, Geldof was lauded by left-wing thinkers comparable to Martin Jacques and Stuart Corridor, who regarded it as a severe blow to what they noticed because the prevailing Thatcherite ideology of selfishness.
However this was disputed, significantly by economics educational Robert Allen, who stated that what Reside Assist and its successors had created was in truth “the primary actually efficient model of Shopper Assist” – making a product tailor-made to a selected client.
For these caught up in crises which seize a rock star’s consideration, the impact will be astonishing. Because the humanitarian Jan Egeland summed up not lengthy after the 2004 tsunami, catastrophe victims can discover themselves “in a sort of humanitarian sweepstake by which … each evening 99% of them lose, and 1% win”.
Double-edged sword of celeb activism
However what are the drawbacks of media protection? In Simply For One Day there are a number of scenes the place tabloid hacks push Geldof to go to Ethiopia, or be pictured with a ravenous little one.
That is the sort of imagery that critics of celeb activism comparable to Tanja Mueller level out is “instrumental in establishing a … tradition of humanitarianism by which ethical duty in direction of impoverished components of an imagined Africa is predicated on pity reasonably than the demand for justice”.
And whereas the present-day Gen Z character of Jemma within the musical describes Reside Assist as “outdated white guys taking a day without work from snorting cocaine to assist Africa”, this criticism isn’t new.
In 1986, the anarchist punk band Chumbawumba launched an album satirising rock stars’ charitable involvement referred to as Photos of Ravenous Youngsters Promote Information. After 2005’s Reside 8 concert events, an HMV music chart revealed that a few of the bands participating skilled a 1300% enhance in album gross sales.
But students comparable to Andrew F. Cooper have been extra constructive in regards to the concept of the celeb activist, seeing them as bringing their chosen causes right into a broader public area and getting access to key circles of energy – what he calls the “Bono-isation” of diplomacy. Jubilee 2000, Reside 8 and Reside Earth all centered extra on political change than fundraising.
However does utilizing celebrities actually assist charities day after day? A survey of 2000 individuals discovered that whereas 95% of individuals may recognise 5 or extra charities, two thirds couldn’t title a single celeb connected to them.
The Previous Vic
So why do charities, politicians and celebrities proceed to work collectively? Maybe as a result of politicians like being round celebrities, and consider that they categorical populist sentiment. In any case, essentially the most fixed double act in Simply For One Day isn’t Geldof and any of the pop stars and even help staff in Ethiopia, however Margaret Thatcher, with whom he shares a number of duets.
Altering the ‘pity’ strategy
Issues have modified since Reside Assist albeit slowly. After criticisms round Comedian Reduction and the thought of “poverty tourism” that fed into notions of the “white saviour”, the BBC pledged to alter the best way it does celeb appeals.
Many charities work arduous with their celeb advocates to make sure they know what they’re speaking about, not like previous cringeworthy efforts notably skewered within the Guardian’s Secret Diary of an Assist Employee.
And so the place does this depart the Previous Vic’s new musical? Properly, for those who’re somebody who was at Reside Assist or remembers watching it, it’s going to undoubtedly conjure up all these emotions of pleasure and being a part of one thing greater than your self – the concept that we may very well be heroes.
If you happen to’re a part of the help sector, the sense of ambivalence will most likely stay: was all of it only for at some point?
