Icons of poverty- and how they mislead us
Why is it important to understand media’s affect on displaying poverty in society?
It’s crucial that people striving to give back are aware of media’s effect on society’s understanding of poverty. This is so that in a climate where a wide variety of information is published online, people can be properly informed about about current world affairs. As a result, they can come to their own conclusions about what the right ways to combat poverty are.
How are people misled by icons of poverty?
Entertainment
Movies, songs and other products of media can be created to be sold and to benefit specific charity causes in mind. However, some particular pieces of “charitable entertainment” have become icons of poverty themselves. Their “icon-statuses” have been achieved through constantly being shared and recreated. Although it appears helpful that media of this sort gains pop-culture credibility because it can spread awareness of an issue, deeper investigation reveals that we are mislead – such legacies have the capacity to create more harm than good.
One classic example is the song Do They Know it’s Christmas by Bob Geldof’s Band Aid, recorded to raise money for an Ethiopian famine which unfolded in 1984.
Another version was recently released in 2014, which shows how enduring this song has been as an icon of charity.
For many, Christmas marks a season of giving, and charity aligns with this concept. But what makes this song misleading?
- It makes generalizations of African people as a whole. Not only is a significant portion of the African population Christian, but there is no reason to assume that most Africans are unaware of the holiday just because some areas of the continent are dominant in other religions.
- It’s demeaning. The lyrical content of “Do They Know it’s Christmas” revolves around the illusion that Africa is a place “where nothing ever grows,” where “the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears.”
- It perpetuates a “White Industrial Saviour Complex.” The lyric, “throw your arms around the world at Christmas time” perpetuates the notion that we can “save them” simply because of our cultural context.
- Those who buy the song in support don’t know how this money is being used. The song deserves credit for bringing the world’s attention to a particular issue and raising money for NGOs that did save lives. However, critics of Band Aid argue that “it may have contributed to as many deaths.”
These are only a few of the reasons why Band Aid’s “Do They Know it’s Christmas” spreads misinformation to the masses. As a result, the song demonstrates that entertainment as an icon of poverty has the power to mislead public perception.
Celebrities
Through social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, celebrities encourage individuals to donate money and/ or clothes to charities. People want to copy celebrity actions because celebrities are role models in society who are implying that if you donate money, you are a valuable person. However, these donations can actually be more harmful than helpful. The post “The Harm of Charity and Donations: Money doesn’t fix every problem” explains how donating money to a campaign, such as TOMS Shoes, prevents people in poverty from digging themselves out of their sad reality. The post also addresses the question of where our aid is going, which is important in displaying that the money we donate is not having the positive effect we believe.
Do celebrities help combat poverty?
Yes! Even though some celebrities encourage the wrong ways of helping, other celebrities use their fame to fight for social justice. For example, Bono, the lead singer of U2, endeavored to end hunger, poverty, and disease. Through media, Bono raises awareness about his nonprofit ONE.
This TED talk, “The good news on poverty (Yes, there’s good news),” features Bono sharing data that provides us with hope that the end of poverty is near.
This topic is truly fascinating because it talks about the goods AND evils of mass media coverage of poverty. Although it has problems of its own, I truly believe that Bono’s ONE campaign shifts the national conversation towards the right direction – through accurate knowledge and awareness of how our charity can actually help, we can make a difference. This discourages the “check-writing” system that encourages people to throw money at this problem, a system that is so prevalent in the status quo.
I think this post elaborates on a topic that isn’t discussed as often as it maybe should be. I like the organization used to lay out the information. Adding the song and the step-by-step explanation on why it is misleading presents a great topic and reasoning! There is a lot of text, but the media added is definitely a good way to break it up.
I find this topic very interesting, and I think it needs to be more common knowledge for people. When first listening to the “do they know its Christmas” song one might think fondly of the band and the song, believing that its nice of them to write a song about the poor people in Africa, but once analyzing the true meaning behind the song it becomes clear that it is demeaning and all the other negatives mentioned in the post. This is just one example of the many ways in which the media can influence aid and poverty, very interesting!
I think this is a great representation of a really interesting and commonly misunderstood topic . I think that the Do They Know It’s Christmas part is especially effective. By going into more depth with this conversation than we did in class, I understand even more deeply the impact that this video has on society. The platform that celebrities have in mass media has a huge effect on the lives of its users. When users do not possess the media literacy to filter out what is real and what is framed for the purpose of consumerism it is easy to be influenced by familiar faces and well known charities, without looking deeper into the issues and where donations are actually going to. I think this post did a great job addressing all of these issues and more, and I wish we got to discuss this topic even more this semester.
This topic highlights the importance of not participating in aid without doing your own research. Before this class, the ideas shown in this post were what I knew to be effective aid and charity. As Noelle Sullivan and Judy Lasker pointed out in our class discussion, there is no reliable source that rates charities or shows which is reliable. Because of this, most of our attention around aid is media. Without a reliable source, we have to question everything we see . It is sometimes scary to see how popularized and worshiped unreliable aid organizations are. Constantly seeing these songs, commercials, pictures, etc, we are inevitably effected by the thoughts of these organizations, charities, and movements become normalized. We have to actively seek out more information if we want to improve our aid. I really like that this post ends with possible solutions to this problem and I think that keeping an open discussion and doing research is the first step to changing the way we think about aid.