On PKN and "disability awareness" (Or: Just say no to awareness.)

Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, or as they are internationally known, PKN, will be representing Finland in the upcoming Eurovision song contest. The contest is a big deal (alright, for Europeans such as me) and the fact that all of the members of PKN have an intellectual or a developmental disability is too. 

A big fucking deal. Totally. No doubt. PKN was chosen to represent Finland by popular vote. And this was no pity vote either. These guys fucking kick ass.  

In the nail-on-the-head words by PKN [my translation]:

Päättäjät sulkevat ihmiset suljettuihin huoneisiin
Mutta me ei haluta olla niissä huoneissa niin
Kukaan ei huolehdi meistä, ei tuu edes niihin huoneisiin katsomaan
Miten meidän orpojen niissä huoneissa käy?

CH: Päättäjä on pettäjä
Pettäjä on päättäjä
Kun ei meistä kehareista
tippaakaan välitä

Those in authority lock people up in locked rooms

But we don't want to be in those rooms so
No one looks after us, doesn't even come into the rooms to see
What happens to us orphans in those rooms? 

CH: Those in authority deceive
Those who deceive are in authority
When they don't care about us intellectually impaired at all 

This is not awareness. Not a chance. This (and most of their other work as well) is revolt. This is fighting oppression through art. This is being angry at a society that excludes. This is mayhem in the service of a greater good. This is protest.

PROTEST.

NOT fucking awareness.

We must listen to the message, not try to make the messengers fit our agenda.

Really, if we take this act of assertion and let it become about awareness (as in: Hey, a man with Down syndrome plays drums just fine and is playing at an international song contest. Busting expectations there, buddy!), we're squishing ALL of the delicious juice straight into the trash and offering the world the driest, most inoffensive part of it all -

"Disability awareness"

SCREAM!

Seriously, and I don't know these guys personally and have never even met them in real life and have only followed them since they emerged on the scene of 'what we Finns like to be proud of i.e. the education, prison system, lakes and forests, being honestly strange, and Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät and their no fucking apologies tack' so I'm only assuming when I say that I really don't think PKN has 'inoffensive' as something they'd like to be.

Just guessing, but yeah. A pretty good guess, right?

So let's just nip this whole awareness bullshit in the bud and respect the band and the guys in it for what and who they are.

PUNK that FIGHTS THE SYSTEM.

[video of PKN performing I hate the world at a festival]

Free our people.