Enjoy Poverty is a disturbing 80 minute film that attempts to expose and lay bare the inherent viciousness of poverty’s status quo. It draws parallels between the economics of poverty and the psychology of western consumption and aid.
It attempts to symbolize the perversity of our own societies, the dramas and the obscure fascination we have with death. So long as it happens far away, we can remain comforted, but only just.
Dutch artist Renzo Martens, who spent two years filming the documentary in the Democratic Republic of Congo, calls it a work of art where he instructs the people he meets to see their poverty as a natural resource like gold or copper. His interaction with them is detached, his voice monotone, a white man strolling through a landscape and in an environment he could not possibly ever understand and nor does he pretend to.
But unlike some documentaries about poverty and war, Enjoy Poverty presents an even stronger commentary about the western narrative on Africa’s suffering. The starving child, the uprooted families, the war, the famine, all these conditions that we associate with Africa come to fore – and are bought and sold for our consumption.
A photo of starving child can net 50 USD. A photo of a wedding is worth nothing. As such, the economy of poverty and war is a reflection of not only how we view the world but also mirrors a disturbing trend in our own societies – at least that is what this film wants us to believe.
Taken as a whole, the film works to make us (the west) acknowledge the exploitation of poverty and in a sense, it delivers that message. However, isolated in its individual parts, the message begins to unravel by making some unsubstantiated claims on donors.
It implies that Medicines Sans Frontieres is both there to help but also to exploit. At one point, we see MSF leaving an area that still requires aid. On shore, the camera lens follows the MSF crew as it slowly drifts away on a barge. Left behind are the women and children. But this scene, while shocking, is not really contextualized. An MSF official offers a court response; but with no follow-up and no investigation we are forced to view the departure as an injustice. For the committed individuals at MSF, the decontextualization will surely offend.
Martens wants the poor to profit from their poverty. He views international aid organizations and journalists in the same light as corporations mining diamonds, gold and copper. IDP tents are stamped with logos. Food delivery bags are also branded in similar ways.
As he enters one village in central Congo he begins to mount a sign. He then primes a generator, pulls the cord, and up lights the words in brilliant blue hues ‘Enjoy Poverty.’ His hosts stare at the sign.
At night, the light bathes their faces, some perplexed, others questioning the man’s motivation. Apart and detached from the spectacle, Martens looks on with a quiet demeanor.
“You can’t give them anything they don’t already have. You shouldn’t give them anything they don’t have. You should train them, empower them. There are new opportunities, new markets, new products. The people in the forest…,” he concludes ” have no clue.”
Martens, entirely conscious of his dominant and pedantic role, becomes the consumer of suffering and thus attempts to personify the true face and motivation of the west.
To drive his skewed point home, Martens shows two well dressed aid workers taking photos of ragged refugees under tents stitched with UN logos. Behind the camera, the aid workers smile apprehensively. The smiles are the expression of the status quo, a click of photo, a snap shot into a world where logos and do-gooders find themselves face to face with a reality they are not truly prepared to assume.
Granted, there is some truth to his message, but it leaves out some fundamentals. Journalists and aid workers also bare witness to these events and while some may interpret their intentions as selfish, others see it as vital and courageous. Nonetheless, the lives of those we film are invariably distant from the ones we lead and somewhere along the way, the sincerity of humanitarian acts intertwined with media, makes for a troubling scenario because its decor is draped with the destroyed lives of so many people. This is no stage.
In so doing, he wants us to to realize that we are all that individual behind the camera. And more importantly, he wants us to realize that the person photographed is not just another damned face of Africa.
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