Every day, MTV commands the rapt attention of millions of young Asians with a steady diet of airbrushed boy bands, raunchy hip hop videos and chirping cellphone adverts. It's a fast-moving juggernaut of global pop culture tweaked to local tastes and languages.
Starting this month, though, MTV viewers in Asia will see a different slice of life on their screens. Traffic is a gritty, troubling documentary that lays bare the horrors of human trafficking through the true stories of three young victims. The 24-minute film explores how traffickers operate, who benefits and how to get involved in curbing what it calls modern-day slavery. Using flickering camerawork, jump cuts and grainy re-enactments, Traffic is clearly pitched to the MTV generation.
The film, which premiered in Thailand on Tuesday, is part of a US government-funded effort to tackle trafficking in the Asia-Pacific region. Called Exit (End Exploitation and Trafficking), the campaign includes public service spots, Korean anime shorts and a multilingual website. Sold, a separate documentary shot in South Asia, will be aired in that region.
Traffic is being dubbed into eight languages by Asian celebrities who have agreed to front national campaigns. Hong Kong actress and singer Karen Mok Man-wai will be the public face for MTV China, with a launch party taking place in Beijing on Friday. In South Korea, pop icon Rain will be lending his celebrity status to the campaign.
By combining this star power with a hard-hitting message, organisers hope to reach a demographic that's highly vulnerable to trafficking, an illicit global industry estimated to be worth up to US$10 billion a year, second only to the drug trade.
'MTV's audience of 15- to 29-year-olds is exactly the people we need to reach. They're the ones most at risk in this region of being trafficked,' said Richard Whelan, deputy director in Asia for the US Agency for International Development, which spent about US$3 million to produce the documentary.