In the News: On Charity Advertising

posted by Carrie Reiling

golden-radiator-award-2013In an article for Pambazuka, “All that glitters is not gold,” Daniel Bendix critically examines the recent winners of the Golden Radiator Award and Rusty Radiator Award, given by the Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund for charity advertising. He notes that the awards do not seem to give enough consideration to “the political implications of advertisements and awareness of the historical–political context in which the work of the organizations promoting themselves with the clips are situated.” While he praises these awards for using satire to highlight stereotypes of the global South, he does push against them, noting that they “perpetuate the classical development discourse,” thus eliding the inequalities inherent in aid, as well as the political constructions that created the conditions where aid is seen as necessary.

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