You may not have heard of the term ‘poverty porn’, but it would be uncommon to come across a person within western society who ha not interacted with it. Poverty porn is of course images of intense suffering in order to elicit a response.
Things like World Vision ads and images of refugee camps and Bangladeshi sweat shops, emblazoned across our screens, asking for sympathy, money, awareness, and ultimately, a reaction. Now this is not to say that the conditions we are being shown are not inhumane. I’m not claiming that we should ignore the suffering of these people and pass it off as an over dramatisation of the real issues and poor conditions these people live and work in, however, the almost insensitive publishing of these people, and indeed the sensationalism of the ways some of these images are presented to us, are indicative of poverty porn.
The typical image associated with poverty porn is that of the starving child in Africa. “The subjects are [overwhelmingly] children, with the material usually characterized by images or descriptions of suffering, malnourished or otherwise helpless persons. The stereotype of poverty porn is the African child with a swollen belly, staring blankly into the camera, waiting for salvation.”
Often times, poverty porn works. We’ve all seen the before and after ad campaigns brought out by Oxfam and World Vision. The first one shows a little girl scrounging around the streets for food, rummaging in rubbish, flies zipping around her head and she wipes her snotty nose and looks forlornly into to camera. A few months later, we’ll get a new ad where we see her again, this time raising her had in a class room, drinking clean water from a tap surrounded by smiling friends, kicking a soccer ball around, and eating a bowl of rice and vegetables. All the while the voiceover tells us that our help is still needed, look at how better off this little girl is, help save all the other little girls like her.
While there’s no doubt in many of our minds that World Vision, Oxfam, and other charities like them do insurmountable good to and for the communities and the children who are effected by poverty in these stricken countries, there have been plenty of examples wherein poverty porn has been misused as a way to receive funding, or in some cases, entertain western society.
The add campaign for an Australian charity, Sunrise Cambodia, helped to raise millions of dollars to help support Cambodian orphanages. However, the children used in the campaign, “Pisey”, “Soksan” and “Srey Mai”, were later revealed to be children who were paid to pose for these photos to be used in the campaign.
“By giving $500, donors are told, they can help give sex workers a second chance, keep Cambodia’s youth out of trafficker’s grasp and teach homeless “teens to cook like a world-class chef”. But more than 20 NGOs and individuals have told Sunrise Cambodia’s board of directors the images of children in the campaign and accompanying captions are degrading, exploitative, sensationalised and do not represent children in a dignified manner.” (Murdoch, 2016)
Critics have referred to the charities, photographers and organisations that use images of poverty in these ways as ‘poverty pimps’ (), exploiting the suffering of others for their own gain. Often times, these charities are misrepresenting poverty in order to get the response they’re after, and while this is a problematic thing to happen, when indeed those being shown are often in legitimate need of help, if it elicits the assistance, financial or otherwise, that the charities are looking for, then can it really be criticised so harshly?
This all depends on the context in which poverty porn is used. For things like ad campaigns seeking good, and yes, perhaps even in the case of the Sunrise Cambodia campaign, then perhaps yes, while problematic, poverty porn is a good means to an end. Where I have issues with poverty porn is when it is used in entertainment media. We are shown images of people suffering and we consume this simply for entertainment, rather than serving a higher purpose. Films like Slumdog Millionaire, while having been critically acclaimed, and having a profound effect on the many people who saw it, was still a misrepresentation of poverty, and presented in a way that was designed to entertain more so than educate or assist.
So, poverty porn. Complicated, problematic, and evident in all manner of media. We may never come to a conclusion as to whether or not poverty porn truly helps or hinders those it is representing (or misrepresenting), but as for now, it is a fact of our lives in the media scape we live in.
aesthetic narrative 