Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives: Kathy

"Kathy" sounds like the kind of PIF that, on paper, should be absolutely insufferable. The evils of drink driving illustrated by 40 whole seconds in which we're subjected to nothing more than a close-up shot of a small child's face contorting in absolute anguish. And yet, it wound up being one of the "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" campaign's strongest. Compared to "Classroom", the other child-focussed installment of D&DWL, this one is played less for sentimentality and more for sheer emotional intensity; it's uncomfortable to watch and really makes the most of its stripped-down approach. The beleaguered Kathy effectively became the face of D&DWL - there was a time when you couldn't turn around without seeing the print version of her drooping brow adorning the walls of every establishment, cementing the image as quite possibly the campaign's most prolific and searingly memorable. (Look out for Kathy in the backdrop of the police station scene in the "Mainland" episode of Father Ted, peering over Ted's shoulder, if you want to ruin your fun.)

Arriving circa 1990, "Kathy", alongside "Arrest", marked a departure in terms of the tone and form of the campaign. Both switched their attentions from the victim's side of the equation to the perpetrator's, with "Kathy" focussing specifically on the perpetrator's family, depicting how they too will suffer terribly for the poor decisions of their kin. The two nevertheless preserved a trend that had been prevalent throughout the earliest wave of D&DWL films, which is to say that the driver themselves maintains an off-screen presence. Both films pivot on the suggestion that the viewer is being placed in the perpetrator's shoes, evoking the sense that they are being held accountable for actions that could well be their own; this was front and central to the set-up of "Arrest", shown from the perspective of a drink driver arriving at a police station, but more subtly expressed in "Kathy". The film was also reflective of the campaign's increasing interest in taking a more artsy, experimental approach to its messaging, after years of exceedingly austere output (I wonder if they took some inspiration from Herz Frank's 1978 piece Ten Minutes Older, with its close range focus on the emoting of small children). Much like "Eyes", it's is an exercise in minimalism, with a single shot of a human face that becomes increasingly challenging to look at the longer it lingers, as disembodied voices fill us in on the necessary narrative details. Compared to the gruesome physicality of "Eyes", there is nothing in the visuals of "Kathy" to directly link the film to the matter of drink driving - it would be easy enough to envision the same image and format being tweaked and used as an advertisement for the NSPCC. The immediate situation in the film is one of domestic strife; Kathy's silent distress is juxtaposed with the turbulent sounds of her parents at odds. Her mother is angry with her father, we discover, because he hit and killed a young boy while driving under the influence of alcohol, and now Kathy is having to face the judgement of her peers at school for her his actions. (There's never any explicit crossover between the D&DWL films, but I like to think of this one as a follow-up to "Classroom". The circumstances are certainly compatible for Matthew to be our victim.)

Arguably, "Kathy" qualifies as another D&DWL monologue, since only one character has any discernable dialogue, albeit not the character we see onscreen. Its particular approach seems most comparable to "Mates", in that this dialogue forms part of a two-way conversation, in which the second participant's silence effectively comes to signify a response in itself. "Kathy" offers a reversal on how this dynamic would be used in "Mates", where the drink driver was the garrulous party and his hospitalised passenger's laboured breathing became a shorthand for his condemnation. In "Kathy", the father's silence is indicative of his inability to articulate a defence, suggesting that he has none. Kathy's silence serves much the same purpose - her lack of a voice in the matter reflects her own inability to comprehend what has happened, and the extent to which she finds herself tied to the fate of her father, in having to account for his actions when they are beyond all understanding, to either child or adult.

The effects of the intense close-up, meanwhile, are two-fold. It immerses us in the claustrophobia of Kathy's world, in which the harsh, frantic voice of her mother seems emblematic of her entrapment, a swirling voice inside her head denoting the disruption all around her from which she has no escape. It is made clear that there is no refuge for Kathy - her domestic life is in turmoil, she's subject to disdainful scrutiny from the other children at school and she's unable to sleep, denying her even the temporary escapism of dreaming. As the film continues, however, we get the sense of her mother's voice becoming more of an inner monologue for Kathy, articulating her considerable anguish and desperation on her behalf, while the viewer finds themselves cast, unexpectedly, in the role of her father. The giveaway there is that when Kathy's mother screams "Look at me!", it is Kathy who then looks directly at the camera - ostensibly a gesture of helplessness on her part, it as if the challenge is being extended to the viewer to return her gaze. The forcefulness of the shot means that, for for a couple of seconds, the viewer is rendered the helpless one in the equation, presented with only two options - either we face the harrowing consequences of our own hypothetical actions, or we fail Kathy twice over by looking downward at our living room carpet instead.