Simply For One Day, the Previous Vic’s new musical about Stay Help, recreates the story behind the history-making live performance in a spectacle stuffed with iconic Eighties rock anthems.
The script could really feel a bit clunky, however because it’s carried out in entrance of enthusiastic audiences largely made up of individuals sufficiently old to keep in mind that heat July day in 1985, that is unlikely to be a sticking level.
Rocks star Bob Geldof and the typically forgotten Midge Ure gathered collectively the largest music acts of the time and persuaded them to play free of charge in concurrent concert events, one at London’s Wembley enviornment and one on the JFK stadium in Philadelphia. The thought was to boost cash to assist feed hundreds of thousands of ravenous folks 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 only a few. Because the concert events beamed out to 150 international locations across the globe, the cash poured in, finally elevating US$140m (£114m).
Relatively like Stay Help itself, the evaluations 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 Every day Categorical noticed it as a “celebration and reminder of what human beings can obtain”, a relatively withering Guardian evaluate 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 truth stays that Stay Help was a worldwide media spectacle. The occasion adopted the success of Geldof’s Band Help December 1984 single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, recorded by a collective of largely British musical stars to boost cash for Ethiopia.
It confirmed charities simply how a lot superstar involvement may increase the profile of specific disasters and causes – and it confirmed celebrities how charity work may increase their very own profiles. What many within the third sector have ruminated over ever since are the advantages and issues this sort of superstar affiliation brings with it.
Within the fast aftermath of Stay Help, Geldof was lauded by left-wing thinkers similar to Martin Jacques and Stuart Corridor, who regarded it as a critical blow to what they noticed because the prevailing Thatcherite ideology of selfishness.
However this was disputed, significantly by economics tutorial Robert Allen, who mentioned that what Stay Help and its successors had created was the truth is “the primary really efficient model of Client Help” – making a product tailor-made to a particular client.
For these caught up in crises which seize a rock star’s consideration, the impact may be astonishing. Because the humanitarian Jan Egeland summed up not lengthy after the 2004 tsunami, catastrophe victims can discover themselves “in a type of humanitarian sweepstake by which … each night time 99% of them lose, and 1% win”.
Double-edged sword of superstar 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 type of imagery that critics of superstar activism similar to Tanja Mueller level out is “instrumental in establishing a … tradition of humanitarianism by which ethical accountability in direction of impoverished components of an imagined Africa is predicated on pity relatively than the demand for justice”.
And whereas the present-day Gen Z character of Jemma within the musical describes Stay Help as “previous white guys taking a time 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 known as Photos of Ravenous Youngsters Promote Data. After 2005’s Stay 8 concert events, an HMV music chart revealed that a few of the bands participating skilled a 1300% increase in album gross sales.
But students similar to Andrew F. Cooper have been extra optimistic in regards to the thought of the superstar 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, Stay 8 and Stay Earth all targeted extra on political change than fundraising.
However does utilizing celebrities actually assist charities everyday? A survey of 2000 folks discovered that whereas 95% of individuals may recognise 5 or extra charities, two thirds couldn’t title a single superstar 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 just isn’t Geldof and any of the pop stars and even help employees in Ethiopia, however Margaret Thatcher, with whom he shares a number of duets.
Altering the ‘pity’ strategy
Issues have modified since Stay Help albeit slowly. After criticisms round Comedian Aid and the concept of “poverty tourism” that fed into notions of the “white saviour”, the BBC pledged to vary the way in which it does superstar appeals.
Many charities work exhausting with their superstar 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 Help Employee.
And so the place does this depart the Previous Vic’s new musical? Nicely, in case you’re somebody who was at Stay Help or remembers watching it, it’s going to undoubtedly conjure up all these emotions of pleasure and being a part of one thing larger than your self – the concept we may very well be heroes.
In case you’re a part of the help sector, the sense of ambivalence will in all probability stay: was all of it only for at some point?
