[imagesource: Visit Berlin]

Anyone who has put the effort into wearing a mask properly, only to be confronted with large groups of people who can’t seem to wrap their heads around why PPE is necessary, can relate to the lady in the above public service announcement (PSA).

She is my spirit animal.

The image was doing the rounds in Berlin, which decided to flout Germany’s polite and encouraging COVID-19 PSAs for a more honest approach.

The city prides itself on Berliner Schnauze, the glib style of speaking that the people of Berlin are known for, and thus put together a campaign that gives anti-maskers the finger, delivered by one of the groups most vulnerable to the virus – the elderly.

Keep in mind that ‘glib’ in this context doesn’t mean the same as ‘brash’. It refers more to an intellectual and straightforward way of speaking.

The elderly woman, middle finger high, is next to the words, translated as “a finger-wag for all those without a mask: we stick to corona rules”.

Image: Visit Berlin

According to The Guardian, the creators of the PSA, Visit Berlin, which has received a fair amount of pushback from the rest of the country, and indeed some Berliners, defended their campaign saying that “public service messaging could not afford to moralise from on high”.

We wanted to use a language that suits the Berlin character and that underscores the dramatic pandemic situation – and that we managed,” the spokesperson told the Guardian.

On the other side of the fence, the local leader of Angela Merkel’s CDU, Kai Wegner, says that “the situation is too serious for stupid jokes”.

The general secretary of the centre-right Free Democrats said the campaign was “neither funny nor unconventional but arrogant and offensive”. One independent delegate said he had filed charges over “incitement of the people”.

I think we’ve all been tempted to raise a middle finger at someone roaming around, face uncovered, as if the pandemic doesn’t apply to them.

In that sense, it’s more a natural and accurate reaction to the world we currently live in.

The PSA is part of a larger campaign of posters in German, English, Turkish, and Arabic, with similarly offhand but slightly less aggressive slogans such as “Mask on, to keep the lights from going off”.

Visit Berlin won’t be using the image again, but thankfully, once something is on the internet, it stays on the internet, so we can still enjoy it.

[source:guardian]