“Poverty porn”…I had never heard that term until earlier this month. A social worker mentioned the term when I was talking to them about highlighting specific individuals experiencing homelessness and how a people could help them. Later that day I looked up the meaning of that phrase. Here is Cy Alcala’s definition from an Medium article a couple years ago…
Poverty porn is a concept used to refer to sensational media content, typically using a voyeuristic, schadenfreude-style viewpoint when portraying poverty to generate controversy and traffic and it is exploited by filmmakers, advertisers, and others for profit.
You may think you’ve never seen poverty porn, or a version of it. You would be wrong. Is there anyone who hasn’t seen Sarah McLachlan’s SPCA public announcement?
Clearly Alcala thinks poverty porn is wrong (as did the social worker who told me about the term). As with most things in life, there’s shades of right and wrong…a gray area. Which is weird because she also wrote this…
That’s not to say that we should bury our heads in the sand; we must be aware of the issues around us. But maybe we should focus on the solutions, rather than the problems.
She’s not wrong…but if you don’t highlight the problem, focusing on solutions won’t happen. It’s the same thing with ending homelessness for individuals. By the way, ending homelessness does not mean that no person will ever experience homelessness in a community.
It means that systems are in place to ensure that any experience of homelessness is brief and permanently resolved, and rare overall. As an analogy, a well-functioning health care system will not necessarily prevent people from getting sick. But it will ensure that people who fall ill are triaged appropriately and receive the services they need so their illness does not become a crisis.
Today you need to “stop the scroll” and get people to pay attention. The homeless situation seems overwhelming because it is, but it’s not insurmountable.
We need to focus on specific individuals who need help, and get a group of people to do whatever is necessary to get that person housed. If it takes poverty porn to get their message noticed, that their situation isn’t one of their own choosing (god I hate the people who think people choose to be homeless) then so be it.
Back to Sarah McLachlan, her PCA was super successful in raising funds to help dogs, the same strategy is justified for humans.