In this week’s lecture, we discussed about mediated suffering where the media projects the suffering and struggles of others. Do you remember the last TV series or movie you watched that manifests the struggle and suffering of another? Posts of elderly dying from chronic diseases, children from slums or less developed countries in distress because of hunger, and animals tortured can be see everywhere on social media nowadays. Those are the things we see when we scroll on our smartphones, tablets, laptops while sipping on a cup of tea or even in public transport on the way to work. Whether it hit our realization or not, the media uses sensationalized and visually striking images to capture the attention of the public but in spite of that, actual issues aren’t actually tackled.
A very good example would be the TV series Struggle Street where they film poor families in their daily lives with problems such as drug abuse, law, teen pregnancy, public housing and many more. Some have claimed that it is very disturbing and uncomfortable to watch. Susan Sontag wrote a book named ‘Regarding the pain of others’ (2003) where she has a theory that the media sometimes tend to aestheticize suffering for the purposes of satisfying consumer demands. As a result, the line between eye-opening and exploitative is unclear. According to Bond (2016), she also mentioned in her blog post that the tv series depicts a one-dimensional side of poverty and the narration sounds seemingly far from emancipation, which also means far from liberation and restrictions. I also personally think that it contrasts with the initial idea of portraying a sympathetic and caring image.
The most accurate term to define this would be poverty porn. What exactly is poverty porn, you ask? It is the exploitation of the poor’s condition or the impoverished in various forms of media, be it through film, photography advertising, written form and many more for the entertainment of the society (Roenigk 2014). Roenigk (2014), has also came up with a statement that poverty porn misrepresents poverty. The term poverty itself brings the meaning of both personal and systemic problems, where it is not only a matter of personal circumstances but also the social and justice systems in place that either works to empower the impoverished people or commemorate their living conditions (Roenigk 2014). In contrast to this, according to a critic named Diana George, poverty porn actually works as it is not easy convincing Western audiences especially, that poverty exists in our day-to-day life. So it seems like displaying extreme objectification of despair is the only way answer (Roenigk 2014).
Another example would be from just last year (2016), the World Cup was held in Rio de Janeiro and as we know that Rio too has major poverty issues, alongside other problems faced as the World Cup 2016 approaches. However, the media decides to portray otherwise to attract more tourists and promote the ‘better’ side of Spain. They have been reputedly covering the poor homes or in other words, slums, with large walls and shifting usual bus routes away from shanty towns (Lerner 2016).
This is an issue that concerns many and the government chose to cover up the ‘ugly’ bits of the country during the period of the Olympics instead of focusing on improving and altering what is wrong. What we see on the screen on how grand and majestic the Olympics in that country was, may not be like that in reality behind the screens. The Olympics 2016 was supposed to be an economical rise for the country but it wasn’t celebrated by all of its citizens. The videos below shows what Brazil wants to show to the world through media, and what it is trying to hide from the world.
The video above is the promotional video for Rio de Janeiro. This is mainly to boost their tourism industry in conjunction with the Olympics 2016.
And this second video shows what Rio tries to hide from the world.
In a nutshell, the media may be deceiving to the eyes but don’t be fooled. The society as a whole should stop and think if this is a shadowed ethical issue which depicts the graphic qualities of a suffering being for the sole purpose of evoking sympathetic emotions and gaining profit (Roenigk 2014). Do the means really justify the ends?
REFERENCES
Roenigk, E 2014, 5 Reasons Poverty Porn Empowers the Wrong Person, One, 9 April, viewed 7 April, <https://www.one.org/us/2014/04/09/5-reasons-poverty-porn-empowers-the-wrong-person/>.
Sontag, S 2003, Regarding the Pain of Others, Picador, viewed 5 April, <https://monoskop.org/images/a/a6/Sontag_Susan_2003_Regarding_the_Pain_of_Others.pdf>.
Threadgold, S 2015, Struggle Street is poverty porn with an extra dose of class racism, The Conversation, 6 May, viewed 5 April, <https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/pluginfile.php/980801/mod_resource/content/1/Struggle%20Street%20is%20poverty%20porn%20with%20an%20extra%20dose%20of%20class%20racism.pdf>.
Bond, C 2016, Why I struggle with the idea of Struggle Street filming in my suburb, The Conversation, 20 May, viewed 5 April, <http://theconversation.com/why-i-struggle-with-the-idea-of-struggle-street-filming-in-my-suburb-59678>.
Lerner, S 2016, Photo Reveals the Side of Rio that Brazilian Officials may be Trying to Hide from You, A Plus, 20 July, viewed 6 April, <http://aplus.com/a/felipe-barcellos-rio-poverty-homeless>.
Communication & Media Reveries 