Poverty Porn

This list is a work in progress.

Filmmakers like to capture the exploited and impoverished; this allows them to give the impression that they are attuned to social issues, work with non-professional actors (i.e. cheap labor), challenge the escapist nature of mainstream Hollywood (what’s more real than gritty, primitive poverty?) and it satisfies their audiences’ liberal sensibilities to commit a few hours to observing life in the underdeveloped world.

The films called “poverty porn” are so because the presence of an affluent gaze is there to transmit images of slums and ghettos in order to excite...