Poverty Porn: When one receives pleasure from doing or engaging in an act of “kindness” by “helping” a person or group of people “less fortunate” than themselves. This act of “kindness” gets used to justify the further exploitation of people and worsens stereotypes for people in unfortunate situations.
Before I went to this community conversation event sponsored on August 24 by ASU Project Humanities at the Tempe History Museum, I had never heard of the term “poverty porn.” I thought I knew vaguely what it meant, but after attending. I have an expansive knowledge of the subject. This workshop gave me the resources needed to look at the issue of poverty porn through a different lens as well as challenged me to use critical thinking to understand the persuasive methods in advertising/social media. I used to think that poverty porn was only related to unhoused people, but I know now it is not limited to one area: it is in social media, US mail, television, and numerous other gateways. During the event, workshop facilitator Dr. Neal A. Lester, Professor of English and Founding Director of Project Humanities who hosted this event, mentioned the social media account called “Tales from the Streets.” I have known about this account for a while, and it will always show up on my Instagram reels. I remember watching one of his videos and thinking: “What is this guy doing to help the people he is interviewing?” A lot of his videos are of unhoused people who appear to be having mental health challenges or other vulnerabilities to be interviewed and then are being exploited for monetary gain by the creator of this account. None of the revenue from this account is being used to help any of the unhoused people in Phoenix interviewed, and it is going straight to the pockets of the exploiter. With this account gaining a disgusting number of followers (1 million on Instagram), it propels a harmful single narrative about unhoused people (the comment section in these videos makes that very clear).
After realizing how poverty porn is interwoven in everyday life, I cannot unsee it. This workshop made me reflect on the content I consume, reality TV would be one example. The channel that comes to my mind is TLC or “The Learning Channel.” TLC is owned by Warner Brothers so at the end of the day, all they care about is making as much money as possible. There is no consideration for the people and their families with how they get displayed while filming. This is directly related to poverty porn because of shows such as “My 600-LB. Life” and “Hoarders” exploit the people on these shows. The viewer feels good if the show ends with the “participant” losing all of the intended weight or if they can clean up their house, but for this to happen in the first place, they must show their entire lives for the whole world to see. If the “participant” is unsuccessful, they are left in the same situation they started with, unable to combat their addictions. These shows do not challenge the viewer to think about what might cause a person to end up in situations like these to begin with but rather places blame on the “participant” rather than the capitalist economic and mental health systems as a whole.
Throughout this workshop, attendees were asked to have discussions with people who were sitting at our tables. One instance, we watched a CNN investigative report on St. Joseph's Indian School in South Dakota that was using poverty porn. St. Joseph's has an extensive history of abuse, and the officials at this school have used their positions for manipulation. They send out letters in the mail asking for donations to help Indigenous students at the school. These letters included extremely harmful stereotypes of Indigenous people through fabricated stories about made-up students trying to convince the reader to send donations. At my table’s conversation, we talked about how poverty porn is mainly centered around people of color and how it will hone in on negative tropes, which then sustain biases. We also discussed when poverty porn depicts a person of color, a white “savior” is leading the way and once again disbursing self-serving narratives.