Pop Culture Impacts Issues

You may think it wonderful that LeBron James wore an "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt on the court before he played a basketball game.⁽¹⁾ You may think he did the wrong thing. Or you may have agreed with his sentiment but found the garment unfashionable.

Whatever you thought qualitatively of James' gesture, one thing you couldn't do was not think about it.

The Cavaliers forward's brand offers more than just standout athletic abilities. His commercials, gold medals, O'Brien Trophies, and, yes, talent-taking-to-South-Beach have given him notoriety that stretches beyond his primary profession.

James and other NBA players wore their shirts to bring attention to an issue. This one specifically involved an incident of allegedly improper policing practices. Some St. Louis Rams players made their own controversial gestures referencing a similar situation. ⁽²⁾

As content marketing plays go, these initiatives don't involve substantial creativity. They do, however, demonstrate that pop culture can drive discussion of an issue.

News coverage may initially alert one to a controversy. Once aware, a consumer can turn to his or her preferred online or traditional media sources to gather further information. However, not everyone is a news geek (and I use that term affectionately - some of my best friends are news geeks, at least judging from their Facebook posts). To truly keep an issue top-of-mind with a broader cross-section of the population, it helps to have push from entertainers, whether they be athletes, movie stars, musicians, or whatever we classify Jon Stewart as.

Today's interconnected world lends itself to widely distributed discussion. You can get your co-workers' perspectives at the office coffee pot. You can talk about it with your father on a drive to the airport, which is how I got the idea for this blog post. Or you can discuss it online with Facebook friends, or Bono's fan club, or some other dude who commented on the news story you Googled after you saw LeBron's pre-game wardrobe.

Did John Lennon's bed-ins for peace meaningfully impact the anti-Vietnam War campaign? Did Rambo: First Blood Part II call attention to POW-MIA issues? Did Shaq's performance in Kazaam help convince Los Angeles officials to use eminent domain to clear space for a new basketball arena?⁽³⁾

One cannot precisely measure Q-score-to-issue-advocacy correlation. The actions of those with the power to effect such decisions suggest they see some cause-and-effect, however. When the Benghazi incident happened, officials initially assigned a generous portion of the blame to a motion picture.⁽⁴⁾ The CIA smuggled Russian-language versions of Dr. Zhivago into the Soviet Union.⁽⁵⁾ A recent Electronic Frontier Foundation anti-surveillance campaign featured like-minded celebrities appearing on video to encourage the public to take political action.⁽⁶⁾

This last example leads me to my reason for creating this blog post. There is no doubt that pop culture can, at the very least, create debate about an issue. Its capabilities may even include substantially influencing that debate. Sometimes the issue pays pop culture back, too. The Lennon estate still sells lots of Give Peace A Chance gobbledygook, I bet. Maybe POW advocates still watch Stallone movies as well.

I've got a movie in development called I Am Douglass. Its plot revolves around the same surveillance issues the EFF campaign addresses. Could the film be the next vehicle for fomenting discussion, no matter what side of the issue you occupy? The evidence says that's a real possibility.

I Am Douglass online sites :

Website

http://iamdouglass.com

Facebook

http://Facebook.com/iamdouglass

Twitter

http://Twitter.com/iamdouglass

Google Plus

https://google.com/+Iamdouglassmovie

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/IAmDouglass.

Zazzle

http://Zazzle.com/iamdouglass

Rush Olson has spent two decades making movie-like creative products for companies, sports teams, broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ Nolan Feeney, “LeBron James Wears ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Shirt During Warm-Ups,” Time. http://time.com/3624684/lebron-james-i-cant-breathe-eric-garner/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽²⁾ Chris Strauss, “Five St. Louis Rams players took a stand for something bigger than Ferguson,” USA Today. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/st-louis-rams-ferguson-tavon-austin-hands-up-dont-shoot (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽³⁾ Tibby Rothman, “Los Angeles Corporate Welfare: Ritz-Carlton and AEG ,” LA Weekly. http://www.laweekly.com/2009-10-08/news/los-angeles-corporate-welfare-ritz-carlton-and-aeg/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁴⁾ “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 9/14/2012 ,” White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/14/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-9142012 (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁵⁾ Luke Harding, “How MI6 helped CIA to bring Doctor Zhivago in from cold for Russians,” The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/10/mi6-cia-doctor-zhivago-banned-boris-pasternak (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁶⁾ Steven Nelson, “Actor John Cusack Says 'Democracy Itself Is Dead' With NSA Surveillance,” USA Today. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/10/23/john-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead?s_cid=rss%3Awashington-whispers%3Ajohn-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead (accessed 12/11/14)