TORONTO -- A popular anti-vaccine video of an angry woman ranting on a commercial plane about an unvaccinated passenger is actually a scene from a short film that was staged and shared on social media to gain mass attention.
The by a creator named Anjelo Tavera on Nov. 2 and has since been viewed over 35.6 million times. It has also been reposted and shared thousands of times on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
The video, which appears to be recorded from the angle of a watching passenger, shows a blonde woman in a blue sweater -- dubbed "Karen" online -- berating a flight attendant on a commercial passenger jet after the man seated beside her refused to show her his proof of COVID-19 vaccination, leading the woman to believe that the man is unvaccinated.
"I work hard, I paid for my seat, which is clearly going to put my life in danger," the woman says in the video
"I cannot be made to breathe his oxygen. That’s not fair," she continues before the captain appears to deliver a speech to the plane passengers.
"Vaccinated or unvaccinated, we should respect each other," the captain said, adding that he will not tolerate "discrimination" against the unvaccinated on his flight. The woman is then removed from the aircraft to a round of applause.
BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS
Despite numerous red flags questioning the authenticity of the video, including the woman's accent, empty passenger seats beyond the camera's focus, and dramatic background music, the video has been used online to promote anti-vaccine narratives and misinformation, given the film's buzzy social topic.
shared by , which works to verify popular online content, the video is part of a short film called "Covid Flight." The role of "Karen" is played by U.K. actor Diana Winter who is from Bournemouth and registered with U.K. Equity. She has also appeared in a handful of other short films, . The flight attendant appears to have been played by , who is represented by Aston Management.
Jamie Hull-Greenwood of JCP Film is credited on IMDB as the director of the video. , JPC Film is an "independent production team with a history of delivering professional, hard-hitting and visually stunning media content."
While the video has little to no airline insignia, red seat covers with an airplane logo that is similar to that of J.A.R.E., a Bournemouth, U.K.-based airline training partnership, are visible around the 1:20 mark of the video.
, J.A.R.E. offers the Boeing B737 for hire to film crews, among other services, providing further indication that the video was not filmed at an actual commercial flight.
Content creator is listed as executive producer of the film. Williams, who has 5.6 million YouTube subscribers, regularly publishes similar staged videos depicting controversial social scenarios on his channel.
He posted the video for "Covid Flight" and captioned the post, "She must have been having a bad day." However, Williams did not disclose the source of the clip or mention that it does not depict genuine events. The video has since been shared over 150,000 times.
CONCLUSION
By Williams posting "Covid Flight" on social media without a disclaimer about its authenticity, the video was shared widely online with little context due to its controversial topic of vaccine requirements on international flights.
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