This clip, entitled “Marciano” (“Martian”) appeared on the UNICEF Chile Facebook page at the end of July 2015 and they are the owners this video.
It does a great job of causing you to develop empathy for a new student in a school who is mercilessly picked on and rejected by his peers because he is “different”. In this case, his difference is that he looks like a hybrid between a human and reptilian – or alternately, a human hybrid with a classic, cable TV “Grey” alien.
The young boy’s classic, pop-cultural ET appearance could be seen as a metaphor for “difference” and this piece could simply be a message of acceptance of “others” directed towards children but I tend to disagree that this is the only way to see this video.
First of all, Chile is not an extremely diverse society, such as that of the US, where in the households of New York City alone, over 800 languages are spoken every day. In Chile, Spanish is spoken by 99.5% of the population, which is composed of 89% European and 11% Indigenous South Americans – and a few Polynesians from Easter Island, which is part of Chile.
Secondly, details here point to this being a strong message specifically about aliens and/or alien hybrids: We see him at home, lying in bed with flying saucer print sheets, as he looks wistfully at the glow-in-the dark starfield on the bedroom ceiling.
During a school play where, onstage, we see young children playing the roles of a sorcerer and a Monarch butterfly-winged girl, the young outcast reveals his superpower skills in telekinesis to levitate the children onstage, thus adding more “magic” and drama to the magically-themed set-piece.
Suddenly, our green-skinned friend becomes the most popular boy in his class, as UNICEF urges us (in Spanish), “Don’t miss the opportunity to accept somebody different. Don’t miss the opportunity to for them to change your life.”
