Sentimentality Porn

Sentimentality porn is a name I am giving to any public outcry of emotion for the sole reason of you feeling better about you..

It seems to have become a trend in recent years in Britain and it is starting to get on my nerves. This may be a controversial topic, and I hope it is as I think that a lot of people will recognise something of themselves in this post and it is not pleasant.

Firstly, I myself am guilty of indulging in sentimentality. It is only right to share a personal experience before I rip into others.

When I was watching comic relief last year, I was overcome with emotion looking at the plight of the children in the world that are starving. I shed a tear, but, on reflection, I realised that my stream of consciousness involved some very unsettling things:

First of all, after being moved by the struggles that so many of these children face on a daily basis, the thought that was most prominent in my head was along the lines of ‘What a good person I am, I have been moved to tears at this programme, I must really care what happens to these people’ If this isn’t bad enough…

The second thought that entered my head was something about ‘Damn, I wish someone else was here to see how moved I am by this, and have them think what a good person I must be, and how sensitive I am.’

After a good, extremely indulgent cry, I had a sandwich, donated a fiver to the cause (again, patting myself on the back) and then didn’t think about it again.

That’s me done, now onto a couple of case studies.

1. Madeleine McCann - wristbands and posters.
When Maddie went missing in the summer of 2007 there was a public (very public) outcry of emotion. I will not go into the fact that over 70,000 children go missing in the UK every year and the reasons for the outpouring of grief was probably because Maddie personified childhood better than others because she had successful parents and was a cute toddler.

The wristbands with Madeleine’s name on it were sold out instantaneously at a huge profit for the McCann family. (The company was not-for-profit but was not a charity – it was set up to help the McCann parents travel the world for publicity and to help people find the missing girl – again, no other missing children gets this, but that isn’t the point I am trying to make)

People were putting posters up in their windows and showing off their wristbands – it became almost a personal tragedy to them. Now, everybody hoped Maddie would be returned safe, no question about it, but the people buying the wristbands wanted to show their compassion to the world, they wanted to show how much this girl (that they did not know personally) meant to them. More importantly, it became a frenzied competition to show ‘who cared the most’. This would not have helped bring Maddie back, but it would make people feel good about themselves.

It had a sinister side too, a black look-a-like agent received racial abuse and death threats for casting a look a like of Maddie to play her in a film. Hundreds of people, who knew neither the girl nor the agent felt that they had the law on their side to racially abuse people and send death threats. Is this not too far?

Bottom line, wearing a wristband or putting a poster up was not going to bring Maddie back. Why did the people buy them en mass?

2. Sentimental Internet Memes.
The second example of this is of a new breed of internet memes doing the rounds on facebook.com.

I do not apologise for the things I am about to write. This is what I believe and I know some of you may be annoyed. I do want people to reflect on the issue I have though.

Recently Facebook newsfeeds have been clogged up with people showing their sentimentality by liking, commenting on or sharing emotive pictures of old men that have written heartfelt poems, people that have survived cancer or models of babies born with Down’s syndrome being used in children’s swimwear. This is what I mean when I say internet meme.

The baby born with Down’s syndrome is my least favourite one. I think it is disgusting on many levels, not the baby you understand; it wasn’t her fault that she was exploited as a guerrilla marketing technique by the swimwear catalogue.

Once again, I think I need to clarify my point; I fully support the use of disabled actors (especially when the rare disabled character comes up, it usually goes to an able bodied actor) and even models. It should not be the disability that is used to sell the clothes though.

My issue is with the fact that they are using the girl with Down’s syndrome as a tool for selling and a way to generate publicity. Is this not exploitation? How much say did the child get in this? Does she want to be held up to be judged at such a young age just because she happens to have Down syndrome?

Another, more serious point, is that she is a very cute baby. What kind of message does this send. To me it seems like ‘it doesn’t matter if you have Down’s syndrome as long as you are media-attractive’ and what kind of message is this?

Do not share the picture on Facebook. All it does is give you satisfaction of showing people how much you care. If something moves you, fine, keep it private and do something about it privately. I am not religious but I think they have it right when they preach that ‘we ought to perform our acts of charity away from the gaze of others’