Before you decide to watch this video, a few words of warning: This video is graphic, not safe for work, and gets brutal – so viewer discretion is advised.
This Australian Public Service Announcement video named “Set Yourself Free” shows two carefree couples that decide to skip school and head for the beach instead. The video lives up to the whole ‘setting oneself free’ ideology until bodies start piling up.
The question is, why would anybody try to make a point this way and what does this video really say? It is a bit extreme to put skipping school and the consequence of being blown up at a bomb-testing site in the same context, but the video creators Henry and Aaron explain, that’s exactly the point.
Comedians and filmmaking duo Henry Inglis and Aaron McCann have a history of producing disturbing advertisements and they like to characterize their style as “violent with a WTF factor.”
“Two comedians can’t really do ‘normal’ and ‘safe’,” said McCann in an interview with Slate. The question that remains, though, is whether they were trying to prove a point that students should not skip school, or they wanted to ridicule the exaggerated ‘consequences’ of not going to school.
It’s true that school is important. However, the importance people and governments give to school nowadays is so exaggerated that one simply need ask: is it so?
When you see that some of the most successful people have turned out to be school dropouts, and when you consider how dry and irrelevant schools have become in the recent years, it’s only fair to ask: do we need school as much as we think we do?
Education and knowledge are important. However, proper investment and continual evolution of the educational system is paramount. Without the latter, education becomes nothing more than a struggle for a piece of paper with numbers and letters written on.
So, while it’s not a wise choice to skip school, investing in yourself is very important – even if it means going against some of the rules that are imposed.
If you’re a parent, make sure your child learns relevant and up-to-date information; if you’re a student, make sure you invest in the knowledge you’ll need and don’t pay too much attention to the grades – they are as irrelevant as the idea that numbers make our lives richer.
A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.