UO’s own Samantha Stendal and Aaron Blanton are among the newest recipients of this year’s Peabody Awards. Their 25-second YouTube video, “A Needed Response,” went viral last year, gaining national attention.
The video centered around simple message: respecting women. It shows a girl passed out on a couch and a man talking to the camera. After giving the girl water and a blanket, he says, “Real men treat women with respect.” Stendal and Blanton’s clip was partly a response to the Steubenville case and the rape culture conversations surrounding it.
The University of Georgia’s Peabody Awards, which recognize the best of the years work in electronic media, included a record high of 46 awards this year, out of nearly 1,100 entries. Other winning submissions included the wildly popular shows House of Cards, Breaking Bad, and Orange is the New Black.
Blanton says he found out this morning when an email notified him that he had won. The President of the Peabody Awards called him at 7:45 am to tell him personally.
“Honestly I’m just kind of bewildered. It’s a complete surprise. I had no anticipation of winning,” Blanton said. He noted that he and Stendal were the only college winners, and theirs was the only viral video among the winning entries.
The Peabody Awards president was apparently taken with his entry as well.
“He said, ‘We’ve never had a video like this before,’” Blanton said.
Blanton and Stendal’s video has in part been noticed for its brevity and simplicity in delivering a social message.
“What [the president] said was to that tune was, our video was a perfect example of what social media can excel at in terms of motivation change in society,” Blanton said. “It took a message that people were already thinking and gave them a way to really succinctly share it with people they know.”
The success of the video has made Blanton realize what it means to produce socially impactful work, and how it differs with our generation.
“In a way, it’s empowering that we’re in an age where we didn’t spend a dollar making this.. it was a student project and we just uploaded it on YouTube. There was nothing special about it. We’re living in a age where a video like that, based on the merit of its ideas alone, can stand up against a show like House of Cards… that’s amazing.”
Moving forward, the 23-year-old cinema studies grad looks to continue working in Seattle, both with his job at a production company and on his own outside projects.
“No matter what the story is, you can’t sit by and be a passive spectator,” Blanton said. “There are all these horrible things about our culture, but there are also so many people that are working to make these better, and you can join them. ”