In light of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and the devastating new study which found that more than one in three South African men admitted to rape, check out this sobering PSA about domestic violence from the South African group People Opposing Women Abuse.
The video starts with a young man loudly drumming in his living room in a townhouse complex in Johannesburg and quickly provoking a noise complaint from his neighbors. Another night, the same man plays a recording of a violent domestic dispute, complete with shattering glass and a woman’s frightened scream. The fight is loud. He waits. None of the neighbors come. The video ends with the text: “Every year 1,400 women are killed by their partners. Don’t you think that’s worth complaining about?”
As the Guardian reports, even the video’s creators were shocked by the lack of response:
Fran Luckin, the advertising executive who created the film, said: “We weren’t sure what was going to happen. We were astonished. People complained about the drums within minutes. We played the sound of domestic violence three times and there was nothing.
“It’s a horrendous sound – we really took it over the top. We were hiding in the house and thought somebody would come with a gun, but they just looked away. It was a real eye-opener. I think nobody really believes that someone dies in a domestic argument.”
But I’m actually not all that surprised. I think that I’d do something in that situation. But then again, I once sat in a subway station in Manhattan late at night and watched a man try to get a sobbing, drunk woman to leave with him. I hesitated, not sure what to do. A few minutes later the police arrived; someone had acted, but it wasn’t me. Just last week, I saw a man aggressively slap a woman’s butt as she walked past in my neighborhood. I looked the other way, and she didn’t say anything either. I ignore sexual harassment—directed at me or others—pretty much every day.
The social norms that cause us to look away from violence against others or stay silent when it happens to us—to mind our own business, to avoid confrontation, to feel ashamed for being the victim, to feel uncomfortable making a scene—are real after all. And, in the moment, they can feel even stronger than those that tell us it is totally unacceptable to abuse, rape, and harass women.
Of course it’s tempting to believe that, unlike those people in that neighborhood or that country or that part of the world, we would do something. But the reason POWA’s video is so troubling—and powerful—is that while it’s obvious that someone should have intervened, if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s not at all clear that we would have.
h/t to my friend Sam
5 Comments
I think it’s fear, primarily. We don’t want to walk into a situation that could be violent or injurious to us, and we justify it by saying that it’s none of our business. It would be better if we were less tolerant of it and more inclined to call the police, since that is what they are there for, after all.
I recently had an experience that was similar to the one shown in the video. I live in Beirut, Lebanon and because I live in the city, I am constantly hearing loud noises. Everything from construction to the call to prayer. But, there is a very distinct sound when you hear domestic violence.
I was half-asleep when I thought I heard a woman screaming and crying, but I couldn’t be too sure. Well, I was sure that it was domestic abuse after it happened again when I was awake one evening, and could see the horrific family scene. A man beating a woman, and the rest of the family was watching and even helping.
However, I was at a loss for what to do. I didn’t know the cultural standards. I wanted to call the police, but my Lebanese roommate insisted I shouldn’t interfere…
Powerful is right–I felt nauseated as I watched the creator, just sitting there, waiting for the help that never comes. I’d like to see this experiment replicated in the USA, though I suspect the results would be the same.
What’s most amazing is that when the people come to complain about the drumming, the one guy is like, “This is a community, we can’t tolerate this in a community,” but when a member of their community is ostensibly being beaten to a bloody pulp… yeah, that’s fine.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
I really appreciate your brave commentary at the end of this post, owning just how universal and complicated these situations can be. I found myself wondering, “what other ways are those neighbors suffering now, or what ways *would* they suffer, that are keeping them from intervening in what must be such a painful experience to bear witness to?” I myself have struggled with these questions, as a class-privileged white American. Whenever videos circulate that focus on violence among people of color, especially POC from the global south, I always worry about white Americans blaming it on so-called “cultural differences” instead of connecting it to the same violence that we perpetuate against each other and POC in our own country and culture. Thank you for bringing this all back home, to wherever home may be.