I watched a powerful movie on Netflix, “Hillbilly Elegy,” staring Glenn Close, and then read an equally powerful review. The question arises as to the difference between understanding and exploitation of humanity's suffering.
Is Netflix’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ poverty porn? | America Magazine
I am undecided on where I sit with the opinion of the article.
Basically a movie about the poor shouldn't leave the viewer feeling superior to them but should get the viewer to empathize with them.
I have first hand experience with this:
There is an area called Hanover Park here in Cape Town that has a gang filled, drug filled and largely uneducated poor community. What we knew about it from TV was that the people were basically degenerates and we had no empathy for them, often making fun of them and thinking that the place was a hell hole which we all feared travelling through.
Then, later in life, due to circumstances, I had to move to the area next to it. I became part of the JW congregation in that area which was made up of people from Hanover Park, and that changed my perceptions of them greatly. They are fun loving people and a laugh a minute, despite what they have to go through, like stray bullets going through their house on occasion and the death of friends.
Soon I had to preach in Hanover Park. I was scared and my parents didn't want me to go there because "I would be killed". I preached there for 5 years and I am still alive aren't I? Actually preaching house to house helped me to understand the community very well and relate to the people who live there. Now my father doesn't have a problem travelling through certain areas of the area.
Poverty Porn caused my first perception of the community. Reality helped me develop my second, more accurate perception of them.
And in South Africa this is a HUGE problem because of the gross inequality. The upper and middle classes have an irrational fear of poor people, which is also due to the Apartheid segregation laws, which placed people of colour in areas that became poor, and a long history of fear mongering because of tension between "blacks" and "whites" due to white supremacy.