Paul Rogers' Weblog

Back in October I mentioned that I liked World on Fire. As I mentioned before, I love this video because during it, Sarah says that a typical music video costs $150,000 but she made this one for $15. Then she she describes all the charity projects she sent the $150,000 to rather than pay LA studio costs. (One snide comment is that we may have to take up a collection for all LA production staff that did not get paid) Again I want to warn you before you watch the video at this link or at Itunes for a larger version, have a Kleenex ready. I still sniffle when I watch it.

I also added Blogoslovi to my Blog Roll because he gave the Afterglow album 4 stars. He is also concerned about cultural and spiritual issues.
(2004-11-30 19:43:30.0) Permalink Comments [6]

Comments:

Great. Except looking at that video it would appear that Sarah has spent way too much $$$ on her own plastic surgery. She's struggling to make an expression, her face seems dead, inert. Is this modern-age beauty?

It's sad really. I guess the lipsynching doesn't help.

Plus, there's no way this video cost only $15 with all that footage and texting. And imagine how much they're spending on the website alone.

All and all seems fairly hypocritical, but hey, who am to complain? Hopefully someone's life really improved because of this.

Posted by Anonymous on dhjetor 01, 2004 at 12:30 PD PST #

Actually, I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, the lipsyncing was kind of lame, but it is the video for the song (and not an acoustic one-off of the same), so you can't really blame her. And you'd be amazed what you can pull off with a Mac and some video editing SW these days. Frankly, I'm wondering what cost the $15! You have to give her credit, it's only fair. I'm no Bill Gates fan, to be sure, but he's putting his money where his mouth is and lot of people are better off because of it. (I'm not talking about free donations of Microsoft licenses to schools, but, for example, donating his entire MSFT dividend to charity.) Does he still have plenty of money? Sure. But he's giving plenty away too. And Sarah's $150k is probably alot more than any of us have or will give out. God bless her for it.

Jeff

Posted by Jeff Solof on dhjetor 01, 2004 at 06:51 PD PST #

Our anonymous commentator is very harsh. Sarah is a rock star like Bono. Both are trying to raise awareness and do good works. If some of that rock star image bleeds through the good works, I am going to try to overlook it. I have been known to be critical of Bono's positions in a manner reminiscent of Anonymous. When I watched Sarah's video, I was focused much more on the poignant images in the video of children in slums and mothers in shacks with Bible verses scrawled on the outside. Of course the video images of the charity projects around the world didn't cost $15 and the cynical among us might wonder how Canadian accountants dealt with those expenses for Sarah's benefit. I'm not. I'm going to remember the teachers and the girls in the school in Afganistan, think about my own response to suffering and try and bum a Kleenex from the lady in the next cube.

Posted by Paul Rogers on dhjetor 01, 2004 at 07:30 PD PST #

I actually have a soft spot for Sarah McLachlan, and own several of her CDs, I was just taken aback by what appeared to be excessive surgery. I didn't really think she was the sort to go for plastic surgery but I guess rock stars always have age to battle and an image to maintain.

I was more sort of hoping you would deny she had had any surgery at all and that I was on crack. I did a search, and haven't found her on awfulplasticsurgery.com or anything like that.

It's true this is rather superficial compared to her donations, willingness and awareness of other people's troubles and of course her music.

Incidentally your comment about Bible verses makes me shudder. It's just great that people can take the opportunity to further their religious/political agendas on other cultures by taking advantage of their misfortunes.

Posted by Anonymous on dhjetor 01, 2004 at 12:26 MD PST #

I can't confirm or deny whether or not she has had plastic surgery. I haven't thought that seriously about it. And, of course, your shuddering that a poor person in Africa would have a Bible verse emblazoned on her hut makes me shudder. Since the primary virtue in American culture is supposed to be tolerance, why can you not tolerate religious belief among the poor and the oppressed? The videographer captured the fact that she had written the reference on her house. There is no indication that production crew or any other Western imperialist agent wrote on her house or foisted belief on her. Its quite odd to me that people that esteem tolerance so highly are so rabidly intolerant in certain areas. Things that make you go, Hmmm.

Posted by Paul Rogers on dhjetor 01, 2004 at 02:55 MD PST #

Well, I'm not American, for one. :-)

But I applaud your view that American culture's primary virtue is or should be tolerance.

I looked it up, mostly because I was intrigued that the writing was in English in the first place. It appears that Ghana was a British colony and about 63% of the population is Christian, 16% Muslim and sadly only 21% remains indigenous.

So indeed the film crew and aid services probably had absolutely nothing to do with that given that colonisation happened way back when. Apologies if I inferred otherwise.

I do think Jesus was probably[1] a great teacher and an inspiring figure, incidentally.

[1] Only because it's hard to assert anything with certainty about someone who lived 2000 years ago.

Posted by Anonymous on dhjetor 02, 2004 at 01:32 PD PST #