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The politics of shack chic

 

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20 July 2007

The commodification of poverty is becoming more fashionable by the hour. For instance, a new restaurant in Greenside, a trendy suburb near Johannesburg 's CBD, allows its patrons to enjoy their dining experience as if they were in a shack. Not that there's anything wrong with shacks themselves – many South Africans live in them – but not by choice, and they certainly don't pay lucrative prices to use enamel crockery while sipping their latte on Gleneagles road, looking 'shack chic'.

This phenomenon is hardly unique to South Africa though. It is more an affliction of a Western exoticisation of Africa (and the poverty that it contains).

Recently an exhibition opened in Sydney , Australia , that allows people a voyeuristic peek into the 'real' life of a 'real' African child through the comfortable distance of a virtual show. The tent where the exhibition is staged is just a stone's-throw away from a trendy Sydney street, far removed from the reality of hot and dusty Sudan.

The One Life Experience , launched by World Vision, is "an interactive walk-through exhibition that gives visitors the chance to experience life through the eyes of impoverished African children who have been affected by Aids."

While there might be some form of educative merit in this notion, there is more clearly a patronising, exploitative attitude that perpetuates and takes advantage of a sense of Western guilt without prompting any action.

What is just as troubling is the kind of reporting that has followed from the event, which is mostly just a re-hashing of the press release . The journalists do not seem to exhibit a sense of shock or offence, or even of any impropriety, but infer rather that the exhibition's artistic worth is valid, poignant and educative – not manipulative and one-dimensional.

"There's so many massive statistics like a child dies every three seconds as a result of poverty, 30 000 children die every day and it kind of has got to a point where it's almost like water off a duck's back," said World Vision Australia's national events co-ordinator Eva Daly.

Ok, I get what she's saying, I think, but "water off a duck's back"? Seriously? AIDS has had such an overwhelming toll on human life and one can't help but find the statistics boggling, but at the same time, one can't escape the harrowing mortality of it and the realisation of its personal affects.

I sincerely doubt that an artistically shallow, even pretentious, exhibition in an upmarket Sydney suburb does more than elicit pangs of guilt, sentimental sympathy and a reassurance that the viewers are better off than the exhibition's subjects.

Whether the "impoverished" African children subjects are real or fictitious, and whether any real victims of AIDS or poverty in Africa are receiving royalties from the show is also unclear. These kinds of representations completely overlook what is in fact being done in Africa , and while their concern might be appreciated, their ineffectual sympathy is not.

However, the point must be made that although the show may have missed the mark by some way, at least issues of poverty and AIDS in Africa are being publicised. Awareness is being created, even though it might be coming from an uncritical, patronising Western standpoint.

What is troubling is when this is the only way the issue enters the mainstream media in the West and there are no critical voices raised. Surely after more than 20 years of reporting on the epidemic, the media would have learned something about how recycling stereotypes causes more harm than good. - Ricky Hunt

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