“So, you think you can dance” Is a reality show around the world in which contestants sign up to dancer for a certain time and their goal is to impress the judges and hopefully get a golden ticket that allows them to move on to the next stage of the competition. The judges then decide who gets to go to Hollywood and their decision impacts the contestants’ lives moving forward. “So, You Think You Can Stay” is a parody of the worldwide well known TV show “So You Think You Can Dance.”  The Norwegian Organization for Asylum Seekers (NOAS) wanted to raise awareness about asylum seekers that are often rejected for the same reasons as shown in the campaign. The contestants in the campaign are fictitious people, but their stories are based on real asylum cases taken on by NOAS.  NOAS works to promote respect for asylum seekers and has goals of promoting human rights.

In the video, we see “contestants” walk into a room full of Caucasian judges who have probably never experienced most of the traumatic events that these contestants face and they have 90 seconds to plead their case. The video highlights how problematic the process for seeking asylum is and how these systems play on the vulnerability of the migrants. Similar to a game show, the contestants must use their talents of highlighting their tragedies to get a spot to stay. This shows how brutal and unjust the asylum-seeking process can be.

Their intended audience is people who have not been exposed or are not aware of the process of asylum seeking. It is interesting because it shows just how in TV shows we can have favorites and similarly in this process, there are favorites and these judges ultimately determine the course of someone’s life and often these “contestants” get rejected and are unqualified so that poses the question of what constitutes qualification for asylum?

I was immediately captured by the start of this video because of the usage of the parody. I think their objective to bring awareness to the vulnerability of migrants. The migrants get one shot to create a lasting impression on these judges with a goal of inciting sympathy from the judges.

Similar to how many TV shows incorporate some kind of interaction between viewer and contestants, the campaign also goes deeper on their website by writing out more of each contestants’ life story and has an option to vote for who can stay.

Personally, I do believe they were successful in relating it back to something we watch. Yes, it sucks when we think about the reality of the situation but it makes something so far from us feel closer because these kinds of shows and reality judgements are what our generation is interested in and I think creating that parody was a great decision.

Like all satires and parodies, my one critique of this campaign is that a world crisis has to be belittled to the idea of a TV show in order for it to grab attention and in order for people to be aware of I. The all white judges, and the husband seeking to find a safer home for his family, the woman who has been raped by multiple men, and mother with 5 kids. These are all stories and experiences that are traumatic and the campaign breezes through them as if they were just another fun fact of someone’s everyday life. It does come off as a little harsh and makes a joke of the very dire situation in which many lives are in danger. However, I do think this may have been an intended goal of the campaign.