On Oct. 14, a group of protesters from an organization based out of the United Kingdom, Just Stop Oil, took a bold approach to getting their message of climate justice heard. Two young women from the organization threw a can of tomato soup over a Vincent Van Gogh painting in an art museum and proceeded to ask the surrounding spectators, “What’s worth more: art or life?” Their point is, people ought to be far more shocked and appalled by the climate crisis than by a valuable and historic piece of art being damaged—however, the painting was protected by a glass shield over it which the protesters knew about.
An unfortunate truth that can often make itself apparent in political affairs is that many people will not give attention to a critical issue until it is either immediately affecting them, or it is too late to do anything about it. Global warming is an issue that arguably presents the greatest crisis known to humankind; it can and will disrupt or destroy nearly every aspect of organized society like agriculture, commerce, human health, infrastructure, coastal cities and so much more if drastic changes in our political and economic systems do not occur soon.
It can be difficult to get people to feel driven to take drastic actions or even care to stop global warming as it is not an issue that affects people in the same immediate sense as an issue like mass unemployment or interstate war. Additionally, as the full effects of global warming become more and more apparent, it will not affect every person in every part of the world equally and some individuals may be more driven to take action than others. This issue of getting people to care about global warming has resulted in many environmental activists, such as the ones who threw soup over a Vincent Van Gogh painting, taking bolder and more bombastic approaches to how they try to communicate their messages.
The short clip of these protesters quickly went viral over social media apps like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and everywhere else. The protesters and their methods were criticized and mocked for being obnoxious, disrespectful, vandals and for just being “cringeworthy.” It’s very understandable why people would be quick to be shocked by a Van Gogh painting being vandalized in a political stunt. However, I challenge everyone reading right now who may have had that shocked reaction to the viral clip to ask themselves this: did the protesters not prove everything they sought to prove, that many people care more for art than life and bring more attention to their cause than they ever could have by using tamer methods?
In the age of social media where people are more distracted than ever by short videos and other media they can click between and consume in very short periods of time, it is arguable that it’s more difficult than ever to keep people’s attention on a singular issue—especially one as heavy and multi-faceted as the climate crisis. To captivate people’s eyes and ears has always been a primary objective of any activist, but there are new challenges that come with achieving that goal in the modern age.
Perhaps for these protesters, their stunt was far more calculated than people assumed on social media, and their intention was to create a viral clip that will gain publicity, whether it’s good or bad. Perhaps it’s also a little far-fetched to suggest they knew precisely how they could perfectly hit the TikTok algorithm, predicted everything that has come from that clip going viral, and what they did was not disrespectful to a historical piece of art. Still, it’s important to try to take that perspective whenever observing how activists attempt to gain any amount of media attention.
In the aftermath of the stunt going viral, the protesters have been covered by news organizations such as CNN, MotherJones, ABC News and many others domestically in the U.K. and abroad. This has given the protesters the opportunity to voice their grievances against the U.K. government as well as to spread their message of climate justice. In an interview posted by the YouTube channel JOE, one protester from the stunt commented that “I agree that this action may have seemed ridiculous… but what we’re doing is getting the conversation going so we can ask questions that matter.” They then go on to talk about how the conservative government of the U.K. continues to lease new lands to drilling companies to extract oil, and we should be asking if that is ok.
To summarize the holistic point, it is important to recognize how difficult it is to get people to care enough about an issue like global warming and all of its component parts in the modern age of media, so we should not be so quick to mock bombastic efforts to gain people’s attention in activism. This stunt may have felt somewhat arbitrary, but let’s not lose sight of what the purpose behind it was- to bring attention to a crisis that threatens humanity like almost no crisis that has come before it: the climate crisis.
