Censorship and Sensibility

This commercial was banned in the United States for being inappropriate:


I'm afraid I don't have the exact details of what "inappropriate" means in this case. I've unofficially heard that dying children offends the sensibilities of easily outraged television viewers (particularly parents) and should not be shown. But that would warp the message. The truth is that children do in fact die because of landmines and other war-related reasons. But because it happens half a world away, many of us have an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude.

It's unfair, it's tragic, and it's inhuman for children to get killed or maimed because they stepped a little too much to the left or right. But the U.N. had a point to make. They knew that having some high paid Hollywood actor on screen saying "landmines kill people" wouldn't be enough. In order to understand a plight, it's best to put it in terms your target audience can relate to. That's exactly what they did by showing a mine blowing up on a soccer field. The correct reaction to the message is to acknowledge that we live in a world where these horrible things happen. This is meant to spark action that enacts change, not to wrap the message in cotton batting or outright sweep it under the rug.

Children die every single day. No amount of outrage, or pretending that they don't, will make that go away.