The world seems to be having some trouble looking at poverty. Accusations of 'selling', 'using', 'disrespecting', 'glorifying', and 'neutralizing the gravity of' poverty are regularly leveled at the few who attempt to examine, or even simply portray it.
Granted, we may have gotten to a point where poverty can no longer be talked about with less than a very high level of complexity or activism. Which is difficult, even for the very best minds wading bravely through layers of social structure and meaning.
Arguably, there are those who do recognize the marketability of poverty, the sell-power of a distant sad-story to a consumer base composed primarily of liberal westerners (but not just westerners) who have come to feel guilty enough about their privilege that they can no longer live with themselves if they do not look something ugly or unfortunate in the eye.
I would suggest that portrayals of poverty (presumably for first-world audiences) are popular because they are tamer, and therefore preferable versions of the third-world. They help ease, or perhaps balance, the subterranean fear of mysterious, raging death-mongers who rise from mobs shouting "Death to America", with a passionate mission to destroy freedom and democracy and everything else the first-world holds dear. The mythical fanatics who "hate us because we're beautiful" are balanced by the pathetic poverty-stricken innocents who admire the west for the same reasons.
This is the benevolent third-world, where people can be rescued from poverty using the West's superior civilizational tools, as opposed to the malevolent third-world where the same tools are unsuccessful in rescuing people from hatred. It's reassuring. Happy poor are easier to reconcile with, and deal with, than angry enemies. Especially if we manage to convince ourselves that those poor are, in fact, happy.
And what better place to embody this sort of benign, resolvable poverty than India? Unlike the war-zones of the Middle-East, India doesn't evoke a reluctant sense of responsibility. Nor does it inspire the odd combination of economic and moral competition that the vast, presumably godless working class of China does. And, unlike the sweeping desperation of Africa, there is hope for India. The shining bits may just be able to polish up the dull ones; the prosperous may pull up the poor. It appears to embody the holy ideals of democracy, free market, meritocracy. It makes for the perfect scene for a success story.
If nothing else, Danny Boyle certainly has excellent timing. Unplanned though it was, his film managed to become the west's homage to Mumbai, a city which had recently been host to what some have called "India's 9/11". (Nothing like a corresponding catastrophe to create an automatic ally.)
Having been asked by several of my American friends for my thoughts on Slumdog Millionaire (which, in some cases, seemed requests for validation), I finally went to watch it. I stepped out with one, very vague opinion: There are things portrayed in the film that I wish I could deny, but are probably true; and there are things that I wish I could affirm, but are improbable at best.
More important than what I thought, though, was the question I have taken to asking everyone I know who liked the film: Why do you like it? This is what's interesting to me. Why is this film popular with those who do not know, love, or have any kind of relationship with India? Or, more specifically, why is this particular portrayal of India the one that people bought?
Several answers had to do with the technical, aesthetic aspects of the film, which I too am mostly a fan of. I particularly enjoyed the narrative-structure and the cinematography. Other people implied that their like of the film has to do with the sheer hope of the story, the way in which even the worst of circumstances are/can be transcended with the help of idealism and good fortune. This makes sense. Hope is so in vogue in America right now. For obvious reasons. Maybe that's why an underdog story was so much more successful than, say, a depressing drama about mid-century American society.
Is it a guilty conscience thing? Is it the gratifying sense of having revealed something long-hidden? (There's always the classic: "This is the part of India you don't see." To which I say: "That's only true if you don't want to see it.")
What's clear is that portrayals of poverty are not always comforting. I come back to last summer's global-media outrage surrounding the infamous photoshoot in Vogue India's August issue, which showed high fashion accessories being carried by 'ordinary Indians'--lower-middle to middle class people in mostly small-town India. (You can find the NYTimes article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/business/worldbusiness/01vogue.html)
The two words most often used in describing the shoot were "obscene" and "vulgar". But they weren't applied to the gratuitously expensive items; they were intended for the portrayals of poverty. What people took exception to was the juxtaposition of 'poverty-stricken' people with things that cost more than their annual income.
Passing over the gross misinterpretation and mythologizing of what, precisely, was contained in those pictures (because whether or not it was, in fact, poverty, that's what people thought they were seeing) let me just say this: Are miserable poverty and $10,000 bags okay as long as you don't mention them in the same breath, see them in the same frame? We don't seem to have a problem as long as one remains in National Geographic and the other in Vogue; one in Africa and one in Europe; one on sidewalks and the other on catwalks; one in our guilty conscience and the other in our unconscionable indulgence. Keep them separate, and we'll be fine. Don't allow them contact with each other. God forbid someone actually sees the injustice or feels the guilt.
A major point of contention was the anonymity of the people in the photographs. As if those very people aren't otherwise totally ignored. How dare we pretend we could do right by them simply by mentioning their names in a magazine? Would that have made up for their place in the world? Would it have apologized sufficiently for using them to advertise something they couldn't ever afford? Do we not use them routinely, in text books and on donation boxes, as the posterchildren of poverty?
Poverty is one of the biggest problems facing humanity. And faced with it, what do we do? Congratulate ourselves on being able to bear it, convince ourselves it's not all that bad, or bury our heads in the sand.
(An excellent article on the Vogue controversy can be found here.)
Granted, we may have gotten to a point where poverty can no longer be talked about with less than a very high level of complexity or activism. Which is difficult, even for the very best minds wading bravely through layers of social structure and meaning.
Arguably, there are those who do recognize the marketability of poverty, the sell-power of a distant sad-story to a consumer base composed primarily of liberal westerners (but not just westerners) who have come to feel guilty enough about their privilege that they can no longer live with themselves if they do not look something ugly or unfortunate in the eye.
I would suggest that portrayals of poverty (presumably for first-world audiences) are popular because they are tamer, and therefore preferable versions of the third-world. They help ease, or perhaps balance, the subterranean fear of mysterious, raging death-mongers who rise from mobs shouting "Death to America", with a passionate mission to destroy freedom and democracy and everything else the first-world holds dear. The mythical fanatics who "hate us because we're beautiful" are balanced by the pathetic poverty-stricken innocents who admire the west for the same reasons.
This is the benevolent third-world, where people can be rescued from poverty using the West's superior civilizational tools, as opposed to the malevolent third-world where the same tools are unsuccessful in rescuing people from hatred. It's reassuring. Happy poor are easier to reconcile with, and deal with, than angry enemies. Especially if we manage to convince ourselves that those poor are, in fact, happy.
And what better place to embody this sort of benign, resolvable poverty than India? Unlike the war-zones of the Middle-East, India doesn't evoke a reluctant sense of responsibility. Nor does it inspire the odd combination of economic and moral competition that the vast, presumably godless working class of China does. And, unlike the sweeping desperation of Africa, there is hope for India. The shining bits may just be able to polish up the dull ones; the prosperous may pull up the poor. It appears to embody the holy ideals of democracy, free market, meritocracy. It makes for the perfect scene for a success story.
If nothing else, Danny Boyle certainly has excellent timing. Unplanned though it was, his film managed to become the west's homage to Mumbai, a city which had recently been host to what some have called "India's 9/11". (Nothing like a corresponding catastrophe to create an automatic ally.)
Having been asked by several of my American friends for my thoughts on Slumdog Millionaire (which, in some cases, seemed requests for validation), I finally went to watch it. I stepped out with one, very vague opinion: There are things portrayed in the film that I wish I could deny, but are probably true; and there are things that I wish I could affirm, but are improbable at best.
More important than what I thought, though, was the question I have taken to asking everyone I know who liked the film: Why do you like it? This is what's interesting to me. Why is this film popular with those who do not know, love, or have any kind of relationship with India? Or, more specifically, why is this particular portrayal of India the one that people bought?
Several answers had to do with the technical, aesthetic aspects of the film, which I too am mostly a fan of. I particularly enjoyed the narrative-structure and the cinematography. Other people implied that their like of the film has to do with the sheer hope of the story, the way in which even the worst of circumstances are/can be transcended with the help of idealism and good fortune. This makes sense. Hope is so in vogue in America right now. For obvious reasons. Maybe that's why an underdog story was so much more successful than, say, a depressing drama about mid-century American society.
Is it a guilty conscience thing? Is it the gratifying sense of having revealed something long-hidden? (There's always the classic: "This is the part of India you don't see." To which I say: "That's only true if you don't want to see it.")
What's clear is that portrayals of poverty are not always comforting. I come back to last summer's global-media outrage surrounding the infamous photoshoot in Vogue India's August issue, which showed high fashion accessories being carried by 'ordinary Indians'--lower-middle to middle class people in mostly small-town India. (You can find the NYTimes article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/business/worldbusiness/01vogue.html)
The two words most often used in describing the shoot were "obscene" and "vulgar". But they weren't applied to the gratuitously expensive items; they were intended for the portrayals of poverty. What people took exception to was the juxtaposition of 'poverty-stricken' people with things that cost more than their annual income.
Passing over the gross misinterpretation and mythologizing of what, precisely, was contained in those pictures (because whether or not it was, in fact, poverty, that's what people thought they were seeing) let me just say this: Are miserable poverty and $10,000 bags okay as long as you don't mention them in the same breath, see them in the same frame? We don't seem to have a problem as long as one remains in National Geographic and the other in Vogue; one in Africa and one in Europe; one on sidewalks and the other on catwalks; one in our guilty conscience and the other in our unconscionable indulgence. Keep them separate, and we'll be fine. Don't allow them contact with each other. God forbid someone actually sees the injustice or feels the guilt.
A major point of contention was the anonymity of the people in the photographs. As if those very people aren't otherwise totally ignored. How dare we pretend we could do right by them simply by mentioning their names in a magazine? Would that have made up for their place in the world? Would it have apologized sufficiently for using them to advertise something they couldn't ever afford? Do we not use them routinely, in text books and on donation boxes, as the posterchildren of poverty?
Poverty is one of the biggest problems facing humanity. And faced with it, what do we do? Congratulate ourselves on being able to bear it, convince ourselves it's not all that bad, or bury our heads in the sand.
(An excellent article on the Vogue controversy can be found here.)
2 comments:
Many points are excellent and provoke thought. The point is not that we can act on all of them but that we think them, as action always follows what we think and contemplate...so if each of us would focus on the subject without feeling guilty or being in denial...we could come up with solutions...just like humans like us in the past came up with the light bulb...or recently with the user friendly pc...which changed so much for all of us...a solution to poverty may be the next big human break through...think about it!
You always have made me smile.
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