AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

NewsWeek

Celebs are trying a new tactic to win the freedom of Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Can their viral video possibly have an impact?

Kim Kardashian is an unlikely face for the campaign to free Burma. The reality TV star is better know for her sex tape and various other … well, assets. But she’s one of more than 30 celebrities—some famous and some infamous—who have teamed up on a series of new video spots that human rights organizations hope will be a call to arms. The goal? To free Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy activist confined by Burma’s military regime to house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years.

The organizers of “Burma: It Can’t Wait,” a mashup of human rights experts, Hollywood and the social-shopping Web site Fanista, are calling the campaign a new kind of public service announcement: there’s no direct mail, no talking heads. Rather, over the next month they’ll tap into the viral power of the Internet to mass-circulate videos from celebs like Jennifer Aniston and Ellen Page—educational vignettes they hope will garner the support of 1 million fans. Fanista, meanwhile, will offer its support by routing a portion of its customers’ purchase payments toward the cause. “We really wanted to get into the hearts and minds of a new generation,” says Jack Healey, the brain behind the concept and the founder of the Human Rights Action Center.

Viral video is certainly the way to do that. Just ask comedian Sarah Silverman; her satire about “f—ing Matt Damon”—obviously of a much lighter nature—exploded in the blogosphere earlier this year, banking millions of hits on YouTube and becoming an overnight sensation. Her take on Burma is lighthearted as well. In a short video she explains to a friend why she wants to become a doctor there (the country ranks 190th out of 191 in public health care), in between chatter of who got laid the night before. Funny? Of course: it’s Sarah Silverman. Mildly trivializing? To anyone in the know, absolutely. But for the Tila Tequilas of the world? Maybe not. “That’s the beauty of the Internet,” says Dan Adler, the founder of Fanista and a former agent for the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood. “It allows for the exchange of information to the broadest and widest set of people, to raise awareness among people that might not otherwise know about the issue.”

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