Good Vibrations is a cartoon short about social responsibility and the cost of being complacent
The plot of the story is very simple and there’s no dialogue, it basically tells the story of an office worker noticing a road worker with a jack hammer has caused a pavement tile to come loose across the street, and it’s tripping people up as they walk.
The bored office worker finds this quite funny and he begins to watch as all different types of people are tripped up by the pavement slab instead of helping them or warning them. All the while more and more of his office are also noticing what he’s laughing at and they’ve also come across to the window to watch people fall over.
Then a bird is trapped under the slab but still they do nothing even though it might be hurt, it then flies away unhurt and they continue to watch. Then an old man is walking towards the pavement slab and the original man in the office building notices this and looks to his friend who shakes his head and he tries to open his window and get the old man’s attention.
It’s too late the old man reaches the pavement stone, but he doesn’t fall he stands directly on the slab and enjoys the vibrations from the jackhammer for a minute before seeing a child coming along towards the pavement slab to which he places a barrier over the stone letting people know to walk around it.
The reason the issues in the film are important is because it’s everyone’s responsibility to help other people and not just to stand back do nothing and laugh at the consequences because what may be funny now can be very serious later. Although watching people fall over might be funny and seem harmless, they didn’t seem to realise that allowing this to continue could be potentially harmful to people that are more vulnerable like children or the elderly. Something that is just a little bump to an adult could be very serious to a child or possibly even be fatal to an elderly person. Although the office workers did not cause the pavement slab to come loose and it wasn’t necessarily their job to fix it or to protect people from harm it was their duty just because they were aware of it and aware that it could cause harm to draw attention to it.
I think one of the social factors stopping people from helping was the fact that everyone in the office started watching and laughing, at that point it becomes hard to be that person that stands up and puts a stop to it because you’ve become part of a social group or become part of a mob mentality where the responsibility for actions is spread amongst the group. For example when groups of people watching a person standing on top of a building shout “Jump” they might not actually want the person to jump but the fact that they’re in a group has coloured their behaviour in a way that diminishes their responsibility for the actions taking place. The act of joining together to laugh at the people falling over also reinforces that behaviour, so it’s not just you, other people are finding it funny and validating that behaviour as acceptable.
These sorts of choices are relevant to everyday life because we should be encouraged not to just drift along and do what other people think is right but to look at the bigger picture and realise that a cheap laugh at the expense of others can be dangerous under the right circumstances. People shouldn’t be afraid of speaking out, they shouldn’t be afraid of doing or saying what they think is right just because it doesn’t go along with what everybody else is saying or doing. People should think for themselves and take responsibility for their own actions and not expect to watch and hope someone else does what you are too afraid to.
The relationship between legal issues and ethical issues is that although a practice like watching people get tripped up by a paving stone is certainly not ethical it is also not illegal. Laws in that respect don’t care whether people help each other or care about each other or even like eat other. Long story short laws don’t care if people are morally good or not they only care that they do what they’re told. In some respects the law is almost a hindrance to human ethics because it turns moral actions into a bureaucracy. For example if you see a woman being mugged or someone being beaten up you don’t rush to help instead you’re encouraged to call the police who then show up after the crime has already been committed to write it all down. The point is the law allows us to delegate responsibility, so although we know we can make a difference we don’t see it as our responsibility because it’s other people’s jobs to do that.
Drawing this back to the film, the reason the office workers don’t feel the need to help is because it’s not their job to fix the road or warn passersby. It’s surely the road workers job but he hasn’t noticed the slab is loose and the old man who is not a road worker takes it upon himself to warn people. I think what it’s trying to say is really it’s everyone’s job to look out for other people we’re not robots who have one task, one job and nothing else matters, the job of being a human being is more important than any profession and if more people took that job seriously the world would be a more hospitable place.
Bibliography;
Claplin, J., (2009). Good Vibrations courtesy of the Responsibility project. Retrieved from; http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/films/good-vibrations#fbid=WGqXP6tA36v
