I'm gonna start doing watch parties of the popular anime series Uma Musume starting six weeks from now. Similar to my vow to create land acknowledgement videos whenever I show for-profit TV/film productions created on Indigenous land, I also want to make a short video before showings of Uma Musume that state in clear terms that the show was created to promote horse betting.
My current script looks like this:
Tonight's feature presentation has financial ties with and seeks to normalize horse racing, a highly exploitative industry predicated on the physical and mental abuse of animals. Horse racing, as well as this cartoon's tie-in video game, finances itself by vampirizing people's wallets through gambling: corporations exploiting human psychology to create a highly addictive waste of your time and money.
DON'T BE A SUCKER! Don't buy gachas! Don't bet on horses! Don't give your money to animal abusers! Your money is better spent on ending the cruel practice of horse racing! The only acceptable amount of money to spend on gambling is zero! Treatments for problem gambling are effective!
Which takes about 32 seconds for me to read out loud.
This script will be set to an instrumental of The Animals' "The House of The Rising Sun", cliché as that song may be; and the visuals may include statistics related to horse racing and/or gambling, and, more importantly, links and QR codes to organizations fighting to end horse racing, and support for overcoming gambling addictions.
And this is the main point where I'd like assistance:
- What should I link to, specifically? Especially bearing in mind that these videos will be aimed at an international audience.
- What sorts of statistics should I include?
- Are there ways the script can be improved? The balance of focus on animal abuse vis-a-vis gambling addiction? More focus on the "normalization" aspect of the show, or that pirating it still contributes to its value as a commodity? The length or brevity?
I guess I don't really know why you'd even do a watch party for it when it is 100% what you've described. A vehicle meant to drive attention, engagement, and money to vampiric gacha devs and to an inherently cruel and abusive industry. Every time someone memes about Uma Musume characters, I die a little, because that shit has created a new generation of female fans in particular in addition to male anime gooners.
Not that we can't watch media made by/for bad people, but like my assumption is that the people watching are doing it to have a good time, participate in the zeitgeist, and by the end, maybe have their interest piqued in more Uma content? Which that last part seems to be the complete opposite of you'd want. It's not like watching a movie made by a director who later commits horrific crimes unrelated to the film, it's like showing prettified animal ag propaganda for something other than educational purposes.
To actually answer your question though because I really appreciate any attention being given to this (I mentioned it while complaining about Hasan Piker attending horse races), maybe you could keep the PSA brief but put together more resources for a thread/spoilered comment that you link to in the pinned threads? Assuming this is for Blorptube.
Something that doesn't get mentioned a lot is also the 'sports' ties to organized crime. This is an old article, but I'm sure I can dig up something newer. It's literally Yakuza/Sopranos stuff.
I wonder if anyone's done an effortpost about corporate sponsorship in the anime industry in general.
I don't mind watching a board of tourism sponsored anime about regional iconic desserts, but it is worth understanding that a huge chunk of anime is quite literally long form corporate advertisement.
Cuz I agree with this:
and more, but without a coherent reason (animal rights stuff being the best argument) it might be a bit arbitrary to draw the line here.
that said I don't have a dog in the race (d'oh) and I don't think watching problematic stuff is inherently problematic. It's cool that erika is doing the work to educate (or provide context to help undermine the propaganda power) because it means people can watch the thing with a critical eye wrt the real world counterpart to the horsegirls and who benefits from their exploitation.
I originally decided to show Uma Musume as an eventual replacement for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, basically just a "hey, isn't it interesting how there's another character-driven cartoon show about anthropomorphized horse-girls that's having a moment in Internet culture right now?" type idea. Beyond that, Devoid Of Context™, Uma Musume seems like it could be a fun enough sports-slash-idol show.
My stance is that all media is art, and all art is propaganda: anything you watch to have a good time and participate in the zeitgeist, is something you can and must also watch simultaneously as propaganda for educational purposes. Stuff like PSAs and my own commentary in the chat is how I try to make sure everybody's on the same page about that, that we engage critically with the media we consume. Critically looking at the contradictions depicted in the shows and movies we watch, the circumstances in which the works were created and how we're watching them, should not detract from our enjoyment of the works but add to it. Much of the issue at the core of all of this is really that we live under bourgeois hegemony and control over pop culture through intellectual property.
That thread you linked is the one where @Awoo@hexbear.net put me on game about how bad jump competitions are. Perhaps she has resources at the ready.
Not for racing broadly really. In the UK I think people are more about chipping away bit by bit so it's the jump racing that I'm familiar with arguments about, it kills so many it's very easy to make the case against it.
Same in Aus. It's such a slow incremental thing. People just need their horse suffering treats. (I don't mean the animay but-)