El SIDA es un homicidio

When a friend sent me a link to this new campaign AIDS is a Mass Murder I didn't know how I felt about it. I was definitely shocked. If you want to be shocked too, stop reading and check out the campaign. If you don't mind a genocidal spoiler or two, read on.

The campaign includes a video, three posters (one shown on the right), a radio spot and a music video featuring "the greatest mass murderers in recent history having sex." Here's how the creators explain the campaign on the official website:

Our campaign to mark World AIDS Day 2009 speaks in clear terms: the new slogan is "AIDS is a mass murderer". The few mass murderers who have claimed a similar number of human lives are shown: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. The campaign is designed to shake people up, to bring the topic of AIDS back to centre stage, and to reverse the trend of unprotected sexual intercourse. Because anyone can become infected.

At first I think it was just the video of Hitler having sex that freaked me out. But as I began to think about it the problems (and ultimate ineffectiveness) of the images and the campaign I realized that they go beyond what some people might consider bad taste.

First off, it's not an apt metaphor. The mass murderers referenced in the ads all had plans and rationales for their killing. HIV/AIDS doesn't have a plan; it doesn't have a reason or vision of a world without people who have unprotected sex. These images may shock and may jar you into thinking about them, but the thoughts don't go far because the images don't really make sense.

Which is not to say that HIV is random. We know that HIV rates and deaths associated with AIDS are far from random, related to race, class, gender and caused by the staggering health disparities across the globe and even across a given city or country. If the point of the campaign was to highlight the fact that when HIV leads to death it does so in a way that is linked to things like race and class, where you live and what you have, then images like these could have been appropriate.

But this campaign is just about getting people to use condoms. This leaves the images as having little more than shock value to recommend them.

On the one hand I kind of want to appreciate every attempt to add to this conversation, and I know how much work goes into these campaigns (and that in this case it was all volunteer). On the other hand I feel like it's kind of lousy for them to use the images of these particular men. If I had a family member killed during Saddaam Hussein's regime because they were a journalist, an artist, or maybe a teacher, I think I'd be pretty angry about these ads. I might feel like people have a choice to use a condom, but my family member didn't have a choice. I'd probably feel like this was a pretty disrespectful way to get some media attention. Actually I do kind of feel that way.

_{Poster image from AIDS is a Mass Murder campaign, concept by Regenbogen e.V. and das comitee}