From ‘Struggle Street’ To The Kardashians: Wealth And Poverty Porn, Or A Closer Look At The Margins?

“I’m so tired lying about my life, about everything,” said Bruce Jenner, reflecting on coming out as a transgender person on the two-part special Keeping Up With the Kardashians: About Bruce. In episode two of SBS’ controversial mini documentary series Struggle Street, Chloe shared a piece of writing with her parents: “I used to get pushed by boys and get bashed and get called names like bitch, slut, freak and ugly,” she read. “Words that really hurt me, because I have a disability. It hurts so much that you don’t want to live anymore… to all the people who get bullied, there’s always help and hope, stand up for yourself and think about the people who love you.”

Both television moments were gut-wrenchingly raw. Both of these moments allowed us to consider the complexity of life beyond dichotomies: dichotomies of wealth, dichotomies of gender, dichotomies of ability. But the people of Struggle Street and the Kardashians are worlds apart, and I was left wondering why Bruce was so much easier for people to listen to than Chloe.

Reality is not a shared, concrete notion: you will never see it in exactly the same way as the person next to you, unless you’ve both internalised the same art, the same stories, the same interpretations of truth. I worry about people who, as they watch poor people take stock of their lives, see only ugliness — just as I worry about people who see a sexy film and see only sex. Previously I dismissed Keeping Up With The Kardashians because all I saw was rich people and fashion. I was wrong — it is more complicated than that — and viewing something complex as something crude indicates either disgust or shame, or both.

Those who call Struggle Street “poverty porn” and dismiss the Kardashians as superficial might need to check their own gaze. Why are we ashamed? Why are we disgusted?

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Taboos On Screen

Critics at Overland, Kill Your Darlings and Junkee have said Struggle Street should have told the story differently, should have focused on different subjects and different issues, and ditched its authoritative narrator. They may be right. But Struggle Street has also been the most watched program on SBS since the World Cup, and it has Australians finally talking about space, disadvantage, class, and social services.

Take the storyline of drug-addicted partners Bob and pregnant Billy-Jo. Bob wants to get Billy-Jo to the Gold Coast to be away from drugs, and other problems at home. But Billy-Jo wants to stay with her mum, who we see hugging and fawning over her pregnant daughter like any other expectant grandmother. It is Billy-Jo’s mother who informs us that Billy-jo was born with a methadone addiction. She wants Billy-Jo off harder drugs but is permissive of her smoking marijuana.

Millions of people previously thought it was a terrible idea to smoke pot while pregnant, and they still think it’s a terrible idea. But in having taken a closer look, they might now see prenatal drug addiction in a more complex way. Screen intimacy with such a marginal family without explicit judgement is unique in the mainstream.

Blacktown mayor Stephen Bali — perhaps deflecting from the structural issues implicit in the program — was quick to label Struggle Street as “poverty porn”. The show is garbage, it made people look like garbage — this was a common refrain, manifested in the dump-truck protest at SBS’s Artarmon headquarters. We need to listen to participants when they raise issues with the show, but I wonder if audiences had said “you don’t look like garbage, you are interesting and important,” the participants would have felt less ridiculed.

Reality TV has a way of making people uncomfortable. As Kim Kardashian showed us in her recent visit to sites of the Armenian genocide, and as Merlin Luck on Big Brother showed us all those years ago with his protest against mandatory detention of asylum seekers, those with power in society can and should be made uncomfortable, and this can be achieved by subverting television norms. Australia is a class-based society. For those individuals cutting social spending and allowing communities to suffer, watching Struggle Street should be very uncomfortable.

I appreciate that people want to defend and shelter those they regard as vulnerable, and that people feel uncomfortable when, on checking themselves, they detect a flicker of voyeuristic pleasure seeing people in situations worse than their own. But as someone who works with Western Sydney youth, I can say it is wrong to presume young people in Western Sydney are incapable of interrogating spatial disadvantage. Stigma has not been created by Struggle Street; it has been raised as a problem. I spoke to teachers and students who, as a result of the show, were deeply engaged in the various debates around representation — in one class, intense intellectual debate raged for eighty minutes straight.

I did not feel the participants on Struggle Street were vulnerable to my gaze. My gaze was accompanied by my ears, who listened to participants speak about their lives as I drew closer to them — as viewers of art draw closer to subjects who speak to them. I did not experience voyeuristic pleasure. Not once did I feel relieved and smug that I was not in their situation — perhaps because they are not the first drug-ravaged, traumatised or impoverished people I have listened to. If one has never had any interaction with someone on life’s “struggle street,” perhaps rather than blaming SBS, one ought to interrogate their own perception of reality.

Anwyn Crawford wrote a damning review of Struggle Street in Kill Your Darlings: “Statistics are dull… Far easier to turn the cameras on the poor and let them fight and scream at each other… The subjects of Struggle Street are overweight, clammy-skinned, missing teeth; struggling with addictions and heart disease and mental illness.” But this is people — normal people in “reality” have all of these things! We have been conditioned to expect shiny middle-class role models in reality television. Struggle Street is a far cry from that.

She continued: “They live in houses that are never clean, and Struggle Street’s repeated shots of cluttered benches, dirty carpets, and dozing pets served to underline the idea that the poor are a breed apart, dumb and animalistic.” Many of us live with clutter, dirt and pets but are conditioned to view this residue of life as disgusting. We see little residue of life in most reality TV: Big Brother, Master Chef, and The Block all feature neat sets and seductive commodities. Surely critical art should present an alternative to this prudish hyperreality.

The only time I felt positioned to view the participants with discomfort was in the awful (perhaps strategically awful?) promo, which was pulled in the midst of outrage. When I watched the series, I was not uncomfortable. Making the poor look “dumb” is what commercial culture does every day. Commercial culture also makes women, people of colour, young people, and gay people look stupid. I used to think the Kardashians were stupid. But just like Chloe on Struggle Street, Bruce Jenner captivated me with his bravery and perseverance.

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Beauty Is Not Shiny; Beauty Is Strong

If poverty is too delicate to speak for itself, then the world is made of glass. The majority of the world’s population — while seeing fashion and mansions on their TVs — actually live on Struggle Street. Poverty elsewhere in the world is not cleaner, sweeter or more natural than what we saw in Mt Druitt. Consider your response to poverty statistics. Do you thank capitalism for making you rich and “them” poor, you safe and “them” vulnerable? Or do you wonder how things might be changed? The answer to this depends on your worldview, and your worldview is shaped by a multitude of experiences. One person’s “poverty porn” is another person’s closer look.

“I don’t know if I’m saying the right thing, if I’m using the right terminology, if I’m offending somebody,” Khloe Kardashian said in an interview. But the point is, we are listening. Onscreen, off-screen and between screens, people talk in order to weigh up their perceptions against others’. The screen focuses our collective eyes and ears, and allows society to thrash out ideas. I don’t want shiny on my TV. I want real. If you cannot see beyond ugliness, take a closer look — and listen — then ask yourself why you see the way you see. By allowing us glimpses of honesty and determination, Bruce, Chloe and others on Struggle Street have disrupted the fiction of bourgeois reality. That’s not porn, that’s art.

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Cipi is a social sciences teacher, mother and writer with an interest in girls’ empowerment and social justice. She has written for Foxcore, Honi Soi, Vertigo, Tincture and a number of fiction anthologies.