EXCERPTS FROM ENTERTAINMENT SUMMIT

Stephen Lewis on women’s issues:

This raises a number of very sensitive issues. It raises the absence of the rights to sexual autonomy, sexual independence on the part of women. It raises the questions of their inability, women and young girls, to say “no” or to say, “Wear a condom,” or to express sexual independence. It speaks to questions and patterns of sexual violence, which are not particularly applied purely to Africa but are true across the globe in the developing world. It speaks to the absence of property rights and inherited rights that women must have. It speaks to the appropriation of some women after the husbands have died, by the husband’s family. As though the women were owned and then taken on to be the wife of a, a brother-in-law. It speaks generally to the horror of gender inequality and to the predatory sexual behavior of men, which is the driving force of the virus.

On parentless children and entertainment:

This raises a number of very sensitive issues. It raises the absence of the rights to sexual autonomy, sexual independence on the part of women. It raises the questions of their inability, women and young girls, to say “no” or to say “wear a condom,” or to express sexual independence. It speaks to questions and patterns of sexual violence, which are not particularly applied purely to Africa but are true across the globe in the developing world. It speaks to the absence of property rights and inherited rights which women must have. It speaks to the appropriation of some women after the husbands have died, by the husband’s family. As though the women were owned and then taken on to be the wife of a, a brother-in-law. It speaks generally to the horror of gender inequality and to the predatory sexual behavior of men which is the driving force of the virus.

On the power of storytelling:

We have a letter from the head of the parish saying they had lost five women in one day, and she then described the loss of the first four, and she said the fifth was the most painful. It was a 19-year-old woman who had had a child, who was HIV-positive, who had clearly been raped in her early years, and that’s the way the virus was transmitted. Her husband was HIV-negative and had rejected his wife when he heard that she was positive. She went back to the village in an effort to create a rapprochement, and the relatives of the husband beat her to death, and this no more than a few years ago. And I thought to myself as I absorbed the power of the story, speaking to what Sonny said about the power of storytelling, even though it’s not the kind of story one wishes to convey.

So you see, there is tremendous complexity in all of this. Human dynamics around sexuality are always fraught with tension and anxiety, but the entertainment industry, the entertainment sector, its enormous creative apparatus, at its peak can do things as they can no longer otherwise be done.

Lewis challenges the entertainment sector:

We may be on the verge of a breakthrough. And this is the moment in time for the entertainment sector to take hold and use all of its emotive and evocative power, to raise awareness and consciousness, to inform the world, not just the countries where the pandemic is alive but in the world as a whole, of what we’re dealing with, and how you can right this pandemic because all of us know what to do. We just lack the resources and the political will to do it.

Ambassador Holbrooke on the need for PCI in India:

The Gates Foundation just granted $200 million to fight AIDS in India. It sounds like a lot, but as you all know, in a country with a billion people, $200 million doesn't go very far. They are focused on three states. It's an excellent program, they're going to work with commercial sex workers, truck drivers, but the resistance we found in India is overwhelmingly to the single most important issue if we are to stop, prevent the spread of AIDS in India -- and that's where PCI comes in.

So, this is where PCI comes in. You are at the point of greatest value, and the point where all the programs are most silent. There's more, there's a lot of money now for treatment, in that Gates project, but there's none for public education, and no one should criticize Gates, because they are the most superb leader in the world in this issue. But I would like to see this issue hit harder, and so I congratulate PCI, for what it's doing in this regard.

There are many other countries in the world that need individual attention, and I am no expert on these issues, I'm here to hear from you and to learn from you today. And I really came uptown today, to just tell you how much I believe that PCI is on the front lines.

On the vulnerability of women:

And a group of women had put together a consciousness-raising group, a therapy group, and they were very brave. And they came to meet us, and talk about being HIV positive. But, they came in a covered van, the room's shades were drawn, and it became clear as we talked that their stories only did their co workers not know they were HIV positive, but they may not have told ld their husbands. And were they to tell their husbands, they'd be thrown out of the house, they'd lose their jobs. So, while one's heart went out to them, and they were trying to give each other more courage, they weren't preventing the spread of the disease. Why? Stigma, and no chance of treatment. You have to break through that cycle. That's why I am so tired of the battle between prevention and treatment. Again, conservatives say prevention, prevention, prevention, but no condoms, which is insane. And liberals say, treatment, treatment, treatment. It's a stupid argument. How can anyone get tested if they risk losing everything in their social and professional lives, including their family, if they're not going to get treated?

Why PCI is important:

And I'm glad you brought this up, because it stresses the point, which is why PCI's important, that it isn't about the Internet or satellites or radio or billboards, the typical billboard in South Africa, a boy and a girl talking on a telephone, and the caption says, “ be careful”. I'm not sure what that means, but it isn't clear enough. In Uganda, they have these posters of famous rock stars who died of AIDS, who say, don't die like I did, and, this is how I got it. This makes a difference. So, I'm glad you stressed this, because in the end, it's not the technology, it's the content. And that's why the PCI is such a valuable organization.

Imara Jones, Viacom, on the power of the medium:

We think that in the past there has been a lot of controversy about whether or not what we do in media and entertainment, can work in the public health setting. What I always say when people raise that question is, you know, my company every year generates $24b in revenue. And most of that revenue comes from advertising. And I can assure you that if Ford, or General Motors or Proctor & Gamble didn’t believe that this was an effective way to provide information to people and to shape attitudes and to change people’s behavior ultimately, and they wouldn’t be spending that sum of money. So if we’re able to take some of the principles and lessons that we know work in other areas, namely the commercial sector, and apply them to this medium, I think we can make a very big difference and use the power of what we have to address what Dr. Lewis raised and what was raised in a lot of other comments here and that is the stigma and the silence that are providing a barrier to getting to all those other issues related to HIV.

Dr. Christine Galavotti, CDC, on the need for story telling (quoting a man named Redding from England):

How should we best engage with revisiting all our norms and ethics? Certainly not through science, although science can inform us. Certainly not intellectually, since those norms are emotionally and culturally geared toward us and they can’t be proved or disproved. Unfortunately, these are often precisely the ways in which education tries to engage with HIV AIDS. The alternative is to engage emotionally and personally, by stories. Real, local, contextual, in our own language and dialect, stories of people with AIDS, people who have lost people with AIDS and so on. I think that’s the use of the media we felt when we started working in this area and trying to support efforts. There wasn’t enough support out there to really take those kinds of things to scale and really expand storytelling.

On the difficulty of changing behavior:

I thought the clip that they showed of Detective Vijay was particularly wonderful because the village chief said that this is my fault too. I supported norms, or I’m supporting things, myths, helping people understand how their behavior, however far removed from sexual behavior, can contribute to reinforcing norms and a social environment that makes it extremely difficult for individuals to do the things one can do to decrease the risk. And so, like Coke not only get people to want coke, they make sure that when they go around the corner, there’s a Coke available. And that’s another part of the context, it’s the physical context.

Steve Villano, CEO Cable Positive, on why his organization was created:

We are in this powerful industry that can reach tens of millions of people. We’ve got great resources. We have producers. We have talented people. To communicate to other people. Let’s use this talent. Let’s use this power to make a difference. Let’s tell stories. Let’s use that story making ability, storytelling ability, to communicate the message of awareness and education about HIV AIDS.

Robert Lindsay, Coca Cola, Africa, on stigma

We have a logistics, we probably know every road on the continent of Africa that’s not on the map. And one of the things we’ve found out as we rolled out our threefold program is this whole area of stigma. And this is why I think the entertainment industry and media in general I think have a specific role.

On the unique power of story telling:

Having said that, it is also one of the most powerful mediums to communicate with people to change behavior. I’m not a behavioral scientist. I guess our experience comes in selling to consumers. And what we have learned very clearly is that consumers do respond to messages. Messages that are crafted that meet their needs, that make sense to them. And it’s in that challenge that I think the media generally has a real leadership role. The reality is that we have found you can prepare all the drugs, you can have all the doctors, you can have everything you want, but people still don’t change their behavior.

You know, examples have been given on Botswana, where we have provided treatment to about 300, 000 people. And yet, very few people are prepared to breach the stigma. So I see that as a part of what President Musegwe said, when the lion comes, shout, shout, shout. We need to shout, but I think we need to get a little bit more sophisticated in how we shout and how we target that because sometimes, frankly, I think some of our communication just goes right over the heads of the people we targeted, or doesn’t reach them.

I say that everybody has a role. I do believe in the world we live in today, the media has a specific role. It’s become so important in terms of communicating messages and communicating beliefs and cultures in some sense. We must harness that to help fight the good.