‘No More’ No More
America’s love affair with violence reached its climax during the Super Bowl. This year had it all: ridiculous plays, trash talking and a brawl at the end. The advertisements, for the most part, appeal to machismo, masculinity. Yet, perhaps the most poignant, important and (hopefully) memorable thirty seconds of the whole performance was not Jermaine Kearse’s ridiculous catch at the end, nor Richard Sherman trash talking into the camera, nor the fight that ended with the first ejection from a Super Bowl. It was an anti-domestic violence public service announcement (PSA) by the No More campaign. In it, a 911 call is recreated in which a woman called pretending to order a pizza so as not to tip off her assailant that she was calling for help. The voiceover, paired with images of an empty home, was chilling and emotional.
It does nothing to normalize discussions or break social stigma, as No More purports is its mission.
Yet, this feels like a concession by the No More Campaign. On Thanksgiving this year, No More aired 30 second PSAs showing NFL players struggling to start speaking on issues of domestic violence and sexual assault. In the PSAs, we saw the likes of Cris Carter and LaVar Arrington, men who are among the hundreds of paragons of virtus we call players in the NFL, struggling for words to voice their emotions.
The new PSA has no mention of NFL players or the NFL. Because of this collaboration and reversal of No More’s previous strategy, the NFL is able to feign a social conscience without recognizing its own players’ shortcomings. The first PSA acted as the NFL’s apology for the botching of Greg Hardy and Ray Rice’s cases. By showing players’ solidarity with victims, the NFL owned up to its legacy of mishandling cases and assuring the public that nobody in the NFL condones the behavior. Though this sentiment is reminiscent of MRAs and the #notAllMen campaign, it is nevertheless superior to ignoring past actions entirely.
This year’s PSA, while well-intentioned, makes no mention of the NFL’s seeming inability to handle domestic violence cases correctly. It does nothing to normalize discussions or break social stigma, as No More purports is its mission. Furthermore, in a sea of big, loud, colorful images, the ad risked becoming lost, forgotten.
The way we absorb media today has changed drastically since the advent of the PSA during the Second World War. No More’s campaign fails to adapt to these changes, specifically the fact that increasingly, memorable images and sound bytes are all we absorb. This effect has been exacerbated by technology such as Snapchat and Vine, shortening videos and, proportionally, attention spans. Between Budweiser ads, instead of being engaged with the screen, we immerse ourselves in the reactions of our peers to the last ad. Thus, the PSA was relegated to the space between summits of color and fun, a space that has become more and more irrelevant within our media culture.
This year’s PSA was a decent effort on No More’s part to raise awareness and reduce stigma. It was, however, less effective than previous efforts due to concessions made by No More in bringing the NFL to task and their choice in medium. Social justice campaigns should not make such drastic compromises in their collaborations with organizations they hope to influence and should always be aware of their audience. No More should settle no more.