Essay
Assignment 4 Cultural Studies
- Vak
- Culture Studies
- Instelling
- Universiteit Gent (UGent)
Partim Assignment 4 Cultural Studies: Enjoy Poverty Professor: Kris Rutten
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Claudia Blanco García Module 3 Cultural Studies 2020/2021Partim Assignment 4: Enjoy Poverty
Question 1 – Frames of poverty: How does the character Renzo Martens frame poverty? How
do other people in the documentary frame poverty? How are these constructions related to
actions, interventions regarding poverty?
The character Renzo Martens frames poverty as a situation which is nurtured by the
numerous NGO, journalists etc. His character frames it as a well-established mechanism,
orchestrated by media, governments, aiming to sustain it due to its benefits. He interviewed
workers, their employers, journalists etc. to showcase who is actually suffering from this
poverty. Obviously, the employers are happy to be able to have so many workers/employees
for such a low price. They are unable to complain about their poor work conditions because
they can get replaced very easily due to the lack of workers’ rights and the number of
inhabitants looking to work to afford something to eat. With the motto “Enjoy Poverty”, he
wants to showcase a new way of living for them, promoting positivism and to not be reduced
as an object we have to help and protect. Therefore, he is also exposing how others frame
poverty, implying that it is just wrong and inhuman.
The majority of these persons have no clue of how they could actually enjoy the resources
they have. The natural resources are the property of big companies, most of the time foreign
companies. What is left for them is to try to make their poverty profitable. But is poverty a
resource that is only available and profitable for the rich? Their lack of education and
information is the biggest obstacle for them, even though normally the media just take
advantage of their situation to make profit. We can ask ourselves to what extent it is actually
feasible for them to improve their conditions if they knew the ins and outs of the situation.
The typical view on poverty is displaying poor, hungry and ill people to make the viewer want
to donate some of his money as if it will directly contribute to improving the life conditions of
these unfortunate people. This is how everyone else frames poverty in this film, except him.
We were able to see this “traditional” point of view of poverty at the beginning of the film,
how the NGO took pictures of themselves, smiling, giving food to these poor people to
promote their fight and their goodwill. But Renzo Martens' character shows how most NGO
are working especially on the “visible part of the iceberg”, while abandoning the worst zones
(in terms of poverty and life conditions). If they do not represent poverty as a situation caused
by human action, they will not carry out interventions aimed at changing that. Representing
poverty as "bad luck" implies helping those people out of mercy and empathy (charity),
because we are gracious. That removes us from the obligation to help them, because we
would not be the cause of the problem. He is implicitly suggesting that poverty has become a
form of marketing and is no longer an issue that is taken seriously, or at least not as seriously
as it should. The persons suffering from this situation cannot raise their voice to give their
opinions because they are reduced as poor little creatures that need help and therefore
money, no longer humans that just aim for a better life, decent living conditions. We can
perceive this dehumanization specially when presenting the exposition of pictures of the
plantations’ workers. This representation of poor people, together with the feelings rich
people had while seeing them, is the same essence as in the human zoos showed by Chokri
Ben Chikha. This way of representing the situation leads people to think that they are doing a
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, Claudia Blanco García Module 3 Cultural Studies 2020/2021
favour to the poorest by providing them with a job – although without thinking of the
conditions of such job.
He also tries to show us how we use other human beings like an economic advantage, by
using pity and guilt as a marketing tool. He wants to give us a new perspective of poverty by
implicitly saying that we will never treat the roots of the problem if we continue to use poverty
as a means to achieve some sort of financial retribution. His character may seem rude at
times, but he is behaving that way to emphasize the lack of humanity we are showing towards
these people. He also questions the actual use of the donations (to the NGO and
governments), by suggesting that they might want this situation to linger to continue
receiving financial help as it represents a significant part of the Congo’s economy.
Development aids are more lucrative than their natural resources (diamonds, coltan) that are
believed to be the sources of their riches. Therefore, Renzo Martens implies that as poverty
is reduced to the art of capturing the worst images of the life of these people, he has the duty
of showcasing the other side of the medal. The NGO fleeing the zones most affected by
diseases and poverty, the donations that seem to be used to enrich some instead of being
used as they should be used, the need to display their logos everywhere as if it would help
the issue and what is at stake. The wealthy seem to even appreciate poverty as an art, by
creating art galleries related to the life of these poor workers. They don’t see them as persons
in need but as tools. Tools which can be used to work, to entertain, to generate money (work
and donations) and to transcend their conditions to become art pieces. As if changing the
colour and the angle of a picture of a man malnourished and overworking, is improving his
condition. Helping them is seen as a way to show your good will and to feel better about
ourselves.
Question 2 – Politics of representation: What can we learn from Enjoy Poverty about power
relations when representing and dealing with (people in) poverty (e.g. in media, but also in
developmental aid/social work/ education or in the arts)?
First of all, it’s important to keep in mind that, somehow, we always try to persuade others
to have a particular way of seeing society. Power relations determine which viewpoint will be
spread and accepted as “normal”. This film shows clearly how poverty is defined and by who.
Developed countries have notably more soft power than developing countries. Therefore,
they define what is normal in our society and represent other’s life from their viewpoint,
instead of describing each culture from the inside. In this film we can perceive these power
relations when witnessing the relations between locals and rich people: poor people are seen
as victims, and white people are the saviours that have to help them. This is not only visible
in the role white people play there but also in the conversations they have with locals and
how they behave between them (somehow, we see a kind of hierarchy).
In this sense, developed countries are the ones who determine the way we frame poverty
and therefore, the measures to fight it. This influence goes from the interventions they carry
out in Congo to the cultural logics of European and American people. However, some of these
influences are more visible than others:
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