News reports these days are scary, with so many incidents of violence, especially that against women. And this is not just an Indian problem; this sort of violence exists all over the world.
Keeping this in mind, an Italian production team from Fanpage.it, decided to come up with a social experiment-ish video where they interviewed a few pre-teen boys. And suddenly, introduced a young girl into the frame. Most of them giggled and one of them even went with the classic “I’d like to be your boyfriend.” But then, the interviewer asked the boys, one after the other, to slap the girl.
Watch the video to see how each one of them reacted in their unique way.
But what if the girl wasn’t wearing make-up or what if the boys didn’t find the girl attractive? The way this video is executed, it somehow reinforces a bias – one which says that the boys are interesting because of how they think (the questions about their ambitions) while the girl is interesting because of how she looks. (“Her eyes, her hair”, “Her shoes, her hands” are the pull factors here according to the responses). Only one kid says “because I’m against violence” while the others tow the “men don’t hit women” line.
Bottom line – A video with a good intention, but maybe the execution falls short. What do you think?