Poverty Porn
Porn? That got your attention!
Hopefully poverty and porn aren't two words you’d naturally put together! But it’s real.
Much like its regularly googled sister, poverty porn depicts an individual or situation in an overly simplified way. Something complex has been reduced down for ease of consumption. The focus is on enticing you, the consumer, rather than depicting reality. It exploits someone’s conditions for financial gains.
We most often come across it on TV screens and posters when we see Africa portrayed as a starving nation, full of an endless supply of children who just need your help.
Year on year, advert after advert, this is the line we are fed.
Just 30p a day. They say.
So let’s get things straight: firstly, I hope you spotted, Africa isn't a nation. It’s a continent! We don’t give to Africa in the same way that we don’t go on holiday to Europe. Poverty isn't confined to the African continent.
Secondly, while we are at it, anyone who has been on a gap-yah (including a lesser bearded version of myself) will tell you that they were surprised how happy people living in poverty can be.
Shock.
People living in poverty are real human beings with highs and lows like us. They are people made in God’s image with inherent dignity just like us. But given the images we are fed it is no surprise that we expect to find the same misery when we visit.
The images and emotions have worked; well, they have made financial sense. The eyes that stare back at you from the screen are unavoidable and so the donations flow in. But in doing so we have been sold a drastic simplification. Our compassionate responses are commendable but the images that promote them really don’t tell anything near the full story.
The Leftovers for Africa video takes a satirical jab at this concept, the overly simplistic view that poverty means a starving African child or that ending poverty is a simple or straight forward as throwing money at (or posting food to) those affected. These views have become deeply embedded into our conscience. It makes us think we have it all and conversely, have nothing to learn from our global neighbours. It’s not really our fault, but we can change our views and we can have a laugh at ourselves!
Poverty isn’t just a lack of money, food or anything else like that. Poverty is a lack of security, lack of rights but ultimately it is a lack of power.
That is why I love this Christian Aid’s TV advert: Mo is an entrepreneur, a business man in need of a break, not a hand-out. He’s not that far from a contestant on Dragons’ Den, he is just from Sierra Leone rather than the UK. It is this positive and more complex message that gets us closer to the truth of the reality of the world today.
But we also must not portray people in poverty as one homogeneous lump of people. Individuals in poverty lie, share, steal, love, cry and laugh; just like the rest of us. Why? Well, ummm… because they are human beings! They aren't all stood in line like Oliver Twist asking ‘please can I have some more sir’. They have talents, skills and attributes just like us but they haven’t been given the opportunity to flourish. When they were born they were no different from you and me, but circumstances have changed them as they have changed us.
I am not saying we should stop our direct debits; the money raised has done phenomenal good.
I am not saying that there aren't children in countries across Africa who are starving; there are.
But I am saying that the stories we are told are far richer and more dynamic than the poverty porn we are being sold. Both types of pornography create distance and remove intimacy. Intimacy of a partner. Intimacy of getting alongside a friend in need.
So let’s start to understand the reality for some individuals living in poverty. Heck, let’s get to know them by name, be their brothers and sisters. Their stories and lives are far more complex, beautiful and real than this cheap imitation we are being shown.
