What Goes Unsaid

Here’s a good, simple TV spot for Innocence in Danger, from ROSAPARK, a Parisian ad firm. It’s about incest and child abuse, so this article may be slightly joke-light compared to normal.

What makes this one powerful is as much by what it doesn’t say as what it does. It’s all there visually, the father, the bedtime story, the sleeping child – and the creeping implication. It opens with familial bliss. And then it twists the familial bliss of the opening like a knife.

Words don’t get in the way of the message, which is important. Often charity appeals and PSAs can get overloaded with facts and figures and words. Sometimes that’s OK. But in this context, and with a message this important and unsettling, the simplicity of the message makes it far more potent.

A wordless implication, done right, can catch your attention better than any clever combination of words.

It’s especially relevant here because child abuse amongst family members is far too common, and far too often ignored or dismissed. The estimated number of victims of incest, just within France, is 4 million. Which is just fucking horrifying, frankly. So if nothing else, that scale of the problem makes bringing it to everyone’s attention all the more important.

I feel uncomfortable. Watching it, talking about it, sharing it.

But that’s exactly why something like this should be shared. And it’s what makes it an effective piece of work.

So watch, talk about it, and share it.