A PSA, short for Public Service Announcement, is a powerful message about an issue that makes an impact on people. As of late, I’ve been surrounded by many PSAs because I’m involved with creating two. One of them is for my comprehensive drama course: it’s about rape and the aftermath. For this class, we are not fully creating a PSA, just using the components of one for our presentation. In my specialty acting course, our group of four is creating a PSA about child trafficking.
Studying these issues - seeing what they do to people, how they ruin lives - is no easy feat. Rape seems so distant for many; people who aren’t affected by it aren’t often very conscious of it. However, for the ones touched and deeply affected by rape, it’s never far from their thoughts: it rules their actions and reactions; feeds their fear and distrust; causes anguish and trauma, be it mental or physical. We, the unaffected, walk without having the fear of those who walk right by us, we talk freely to strangers without second thoughts, we enjoy what we have without a thought for those who cannot. We may know the meaning of rape, but many of us don’t have any first-hand experience of it, and so it remains trivial to our lives filled with easy laughter and joy.
Child trafficking is similar in many ways. People want to ignore the bad things that happen in the world; they want to turn their back on them. I recently had an intriguing conversation with someone about child trafficking. When I mentioned what I was doing for my PSA, I had to explain it to him and once he full understood, we discussed the why. Why do people do this? Why do people participate? Why do people stand by and let it happen? He thought it was for money. However, the gears in my head were rotating in a different direction, and I began to wonder about those who already had enough money, yet still had a part in such horrible things. Are some people really just that horrible and sick that they’d traffic a child for their personal amusement? Because they had nothing better to do? Or maybe they were being forced. But it makes me wonder what human being, with a millionth of a drop of compassion, would take part in this atrocity, even if rebelling meant losing their own life. I would never be able to live knowing I’d sent innocents into the hands of monsters.
I wonder why so many of us, with all our sympathy and passion, lie here in wait for others to help. Is it just that people refuse to acknowledge the sickening doings of others? Do things like this even evoke the same response of disbelief and disgust in everyone? Or do some just think of it dispassionately? Because after all, if it isn’t affecting them, it’s not important. Maybe some just deny the knowledge of what’s happening around them because they don’t want to believe it - they can’t handle it or they don’t want it to ruin the perfect image they have of the world; or maybe it’s because they don’t want to be targeted for trying to help. Are so many people really that weak? If we all stand together and strong, we can defeat this. It may take time and it may take a lot of effort, but in the end there shouldn’t be a single child crying out unheard in the middle of the night, for his or her mother. The world was once a safe place. All I ask is that it should be again.
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