Open Cultural Studies 2017; 1: 395–405 Meg Peters* How Bell Canada Capitalises on the Millennial: Affective Labour, Intersectional Identity, and Mental Health https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2017-0037 Received July 31, 2017; accepted November 28, 2017 Abstract: Since 2010, the large telecommunications company, Bell Canada, has invited Canadians to “break the stigma” around mental illness through a campaign called #BellLetsTalk. The campaign claims to donate millions to mental health initiatives, aiming to also “start a conversation” about mental health online. In large part, the Bell Let’s Talk campaign depends on the position of the millennial as a social media user with a real stake in conversations revolving around mental health. I highlight how the term “mental health” is often correlated to normative affect and behaviour, pointing to the importance of an intersectional understanding of mental health. Colonialism is also at play here, as the Bell campaign donates to Indigenous communities, but fails to address how psychiatric intervention is often a colonial process in itself. Through a feminist and critical disability studies lens, I critique Bell for its seemingly apolitical ad campaign, arguing that it bolsters normative narratives around psychological distress and its place in neoliberal corporations and colonial Canada. Keywords: Bell Let’s Talk, millennials, mental health crisis, corporate social responsibility Introduction In 2010, the large telecommunications company Bell Canada began what would become an annual campaign to spread awareness of mental health. On one day in late January each year, the company invites Canadians to spread the hashtag “#BellLetsTalk” on social media networks, and donates 5 cents per hashtag posted on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, as well as an additional 5 cents for every text and phone conversation made on a Bell plan. The company boasts that the campaign has “set all-new records with unprecedented participation in Canada’s national conversation about mental health, the largest of its kind in the world” (“Bell Let’s Talk Day is one for the records…”). While the conversation around mental health has indeed been record-breaking in popularity, its success is partly because of its focus on youth and social media. Given the rising moral panic around young people, social media use, and mental health, Bell profits from the figure of the “millennial” and the work of young people interacting online. Using a feminist and critical disability studies framework, I will argue that the campaign reinforces normative narratives around mental health and affective labour in order to bolster Bell’s profit-motivated corporate agenda. Because this agenda is in line with definitions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), neoliberal conceptions of mental health, and colonial processes, Bell’s claim to “reduce stigma” may instead reinforce normative understandings of affect. The advertising around Bell Let’s Talk includes very particular bodies: the subjects of these videos, pictures, and descriptions are primarily white and middle class. On the Bell Let’s Talk website, for example, Research Article Open Access. © 2017 Meg Peters, published by De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attributi- on-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. *Corresponding author: Meg Peters, Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5, E-mail: Mpete090@uottawa.ca Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/18/18 6:55 AM