Fall Out Boy Makes Music Video in Gulu
Award winning American rock band Fall Out Boy, in classic Hollywood style showcased the plight of the civil war in Uganda in a music video they shot in the north of Uganda in July.
The music video that premiered on MTV’s TRL (Total Request Live) on October 5 showcases a love story between two teenagers in the midst of war, poverty and the suffering surrounding them. Even hardcore rock fans have labeled it a tearjerker.
It all started on May 28 when thousands of activists took to the streets in 15 cities across the US to raise awareness about the suffering in Northern Uganda. They stayed there for days sleeping on streets on cardboard boxes surviving on biscuits and water and among those was lead singer of Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz.
The event was called Displace Me, organised by Invisible Children, a California nonprofit charity aimed at providing education and economic opportunities to displaced children in Uganda.
It seems that showcasing the war torn northern Uganda has become the new fad for celebrities after adopting African babies. Only recently Alliance Francaise and the German Cultural Society brought a French choreographer Valerie Miquel to produce a dance festival they entitled “memories of a child soldier.” Oprah Winfrey in 2002 sent her cameras to capture the plight of the “night commuters” children who used to escape the war at night by walking to Gulu town to sleep on the streets.
Originally, the plan was for Fall Out Boy to come to Uganda, see how their money given to the charity was being used and shoot a documentary to raise awareness about the plight of thousands of children displaced by the country’s ongoing war, but they later decided that the best medium through which to portray the suffering in the north was through song.
Pete Wentz the lead singer said, “we decided that this treatment (shooting a music video) seemed a lot more dangerous and compelling. I mean, have you ever seen a love story between Ugandan people - especially with a rock band - on ‘TRL’?”
They hope this will urge the US government to weigh in on the situation and intervene in the hope of stopping the suffering once and for all. The song is entitled I’m Like a Lawyer With the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You).
The challenge thus, according to the Fall Out Boy official website was for the director Alan Ferguson and Invisible Children, the nonprofit children’s aid group that sponsored the trip to “make a video that encapsulates two decades of war for a song that’s chiefly about the ins and outs of a relationship gone awry.” The solution was to make a video about a love story between two Ugandan teenagers.
Although the song sounds like an ordinary rock song, it is powerful because it puts faces on the country’s faceless war victims. Shot over five days in a displacement camp in Gulu, the video seeks love in a time of war and difficulties.
Like Wentz said, “Everyone’s been focusing so much attention on our band lately - and so many times, it’s the wrong kind of attention - but it’s all right if the cameras follow us to Africa.” Hey, if they are benefiting Africa, they are welcome anytime.
[Via The Monitor]
