It starts with two children, a girl and a boy, sitting down for tea in grown-up shoes (her mom’s high heels and his dad’s loafers.) The conversation begins immediately: “One lump or two?” “Five.” “Certainly darling.” It’s the cutest thing you have ever seen in a video (they’re children having a tea party so you can’t help but smile.)

However, the cuteness crashes to a halt when the little girl spills the boy’s tea and he gets upset. “Look what you did! You spilled!” The “wife” pleads and sobs but the boy jumps up and bellows, “You can’t do anything because you can’t do anything right.” He walks over, smacks the girl and she falls onto the floor. The video immediately goes to a blackout with the text: “Kids learn a lot from their parents. Including domestic abuse.” A couple seconds later “End of the cycle of violence” appears. There’s no fancy simulation, acting, music, or voiceovers.

Similarly, the PSA doesn’t show a woman getting beaten by a man. It doesn’t show adults fighting and pushing, stills of abused women with black eyes, moms and dads yelling at children, or unlike last week’s PSA, a man pouring sizzling hot coffee onto a woman’s chest. It shows only the feet and hands of the children, never their faces, and it never shows the violence directly. Unlike the HomeFront PSAs, it knows boundaries and it knows that it’d cross the line if it showed–up close–the little girl getting beaten. The ad gets to the point without making you sick in your stomach (even though at first watch you feel a pang of disgust), and it’s unbearable to see, but it makes you care without being over-the-top.

View the Tea Party PSA on YouTube here.

Tea Party PSA:
Holly Levin …. Writer/Creator
Tom Cartier …. Director
Momentum …. Production Company
The Now Corporation …. Editor