Anand Giridharadas and the RSA
Winner Takes All
The scrapbook
Can there really be a ‘win-win’ for social change and global capitalism when we’re tackling the roots of systemic inequality and injustice in our societies? This is the question explored by writer and political analyst Anand Giridharadas in the latest RSA Minimate.
About the speaker
Anand Giridharadas is a political analyst for NBC TV and the author of three books, including India Calling and The True American. In 2015, whilst he was a fellow at the Aspen Institute, he began to feel like an abetter to elite philanthropy. This realisation and the associated arguments became the book Winner Takes All.
About our partner
The RSA have been a force for the enrichment of society and enlightened thinking since 1754. We first began working together when we created the RSA Animates series. This series brought the powerful and thought-provoking lectures of their fellows to a whole new audience and to date have had over a million views on YouTube. As part of the new Minimates series we have worked on talks by political philosopher Michael Sandel and professor of Neuroscience and Psychology Mathew Walker.
The challenge
Anand Giridharadas brings together a complex network of information and creates a detailed world as he discusses the ideas of ‘win-wins’, social change and global capitalism. All interlinked and layered, we had to create visual language that was able to reflect this in-depth content and grow as the film developed. This challenge was made greater by need to make the illustrations coalesce into a complete image, revealed as the camera pulled out. Tackling some well-known ideas from new angles required us to create illustrations that presented them in a recognisable but new light.
The film
Anand Giridharadas has a powerful message that cuts through large amounts of today’s society. A complex narrative to visually explain, we used a combination of topical and relatable visual thinking alongside dynamic animation and elements of charm. Our visual thinking both built on what Anand spoke about such as the metaphor of buying ice cream to reflect a win win and added a new level of detail, explanation and richness through the inclusion of recognisable symbols, public figures and locations. We were able to add extra layers of charm and cultural reference by including figures like Robin Hood, the Simpsons character Mr Burns and Disney’s Scrouge McDuck.
Effective use of animation was essential to bringing this talk to the screen. It framed and focused viewers on the narrative, tying together various strands of Anand’s talk. It was crucial in introducing elements of the story and added to the overall sense of charm and engagement. The end result was an incredibly rich, relevant and nuanced film which tackled some of the root causes of issues that affect many areas of our society, presented through visual language and animation which added to the voiceover and made it accessible to a much wider audience.
The context
Watch the full talk by Anand Giridharadas over at the RSA website and find out more about his book Winners Take All here.
