I have been in rickety condemned buildings that it was absolutely dangerous to go through! Found six families living in one miserably ventilated cellar—24 persons, 16 of them adults, living in the one room.
A quote from House Hunters or Flip Men, perhaps, detailing the appalling conditions inside foreclosed homes for the delectation of television viewers? Not exactly. That’s a New York Times article from 1884, reporting on ‘slumming,’ the hot new trend exported from England. Little appears to have changed between 1884 and 2011 when it comes to the packaging of misery as a form of entertainment, and the widespread acceptance of same in the guise that it is ‘improving’ and ‘uplifting.’
Slummers in 1884 took tours of some of London’s most dangerous neighbourhoods, encountering living conditions beyond the belief of people raised in gentle circumstances. Horrified and fascinated, they turned out in droves for these events, made all the more thrilling in some cases by the inclusion of guards to ‘protect the ladies.’ These tours were ostensibly run with charity in mind; here’s the Times again:
It is a good work in which all can engage. In a reform movement, or in a charity, even a child can help, and all who go ‘slumming’ can prove of assistance.
Yet, even this contemporary journalist had doubts about the practice, pointing out that it skated dangerously close to the consumption of misery for fun by members of the middle and upper classes. That reporter would have seen found much familiarity in trends seen today across a slew of television shows that are, fundamentally, about entertaining people with human misery; Hoarders, The Biggest Loser, Secret Millionaire, Intervention, Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition, and many more are, fundamentally, about watching people in really unhappy and stressful circumstances and deriving entertainment from it.
These shows are often described as ‘guilty pleasures’ by their fans, who say they know they should feel bad but they watch anyway, much to the delight of television producers. Like Victorian slummers, they can justify their consumption of misery with the argument that it ends on an uplifting note, a feel-good resolution to the story that might bring hope for others or inspire viewers to take action. People get treatment for mental health conditions, they win large cash prizes, they lose the weight. Packaged misery is offered up as ‘improving,’ and read as such as by viewers so they can feel good about continuing to watch it.
Just as in 1884, the media supports the consumption of misery by members of the general public. This is the season for holiday charity appeals at major newspapers all over the world, many of which present heartrending stories about homelessness, abuse, and other social issues as they demand money from readers. Conditioned by a pop culture that presents the consumption of misery as acceptable, desirable, and even improving, readers drink in these stories. Seeking the uplift that comes at the end of the episode, they open their wallets to help.
The same presentation of misery for entertainment in the guise of being ‘informative’ or ‘educational’ can be seen in reporting on national disasters, where bodies of the dead are displayed on the front page, or coverage of affairs in the global South. Poverty porn, far from being an object of revulsion and challenge, is news, and it remains relatively unquestioned as such. Defenders who recognise it as potentially controversial argue that it does too much good in the form of donations, political action, or the nebulous and all-powerful ‘awareness’ to be stopped, justifying their continued exploitation of their subjects.
Poverty porn is also big, big money. There’s a reason more and more networks are turning to reality television, and why reality television features a growing number of shows trafficking on human misery; it pays. Between sponsorship deals, advertising revenue, spinoffs, and the potential for lecture tours and other subsidiary earnings, television studios are raking in money with this format, just like charitable organisations were when they sponsored slumming tours over 100 years ago.
Acting like the guides who facilitated trips into the darkest corners of New York, London, and other cities, the producers present themselves as neutral educators presenting viewers with information followed by positivity to end on an ‘empowering’ note. Just as those guides once trotted out their success stories like children lifted from poverty or women who escaped abusive homes, these shows are sure to show the before and after before they cut to credits to make viewers feel good about what they’ve just consumed.
A recent Hoarders episode featured a woman with a home so dirty she contracted a nearly fatal infection, while Flip Men‘s first two episodes exposed viewers to the horrors of meth and gang houses. Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition, currently on hiatus, features misery porn with episodes featuring subjects like tragically fat young mothers and men who ‘turned to food for comfort.’ Over on You Deserve It, women tearfully tell the camera they want to win money for their widowed friends, who simply can’t survive on what they have left.
These shows love to use tricks like ominous camera angles and dark lighting for the ‘before’ scenes, highlighting the sheer extent of the misery and unhappiness, transitioning to bright colours and uplifting music for the ‘after’ scenes. As with detective dramas, the process is so formulaic that viewers already know what’s going to happen from the very start; something terrible will happen, but it will all be wrapped up in an hour (with commercial breaks) so everyone can feel good about the world.
Consumers of media and pop culture are conditioned to view misery as entertainment, and to receiving an emotional reward at the end in the form of a happy ending to make them feel comfortable with the fact that they are enjoying the experience of seeing people at some of the worst times in their lives. Thus, the consumer can feel secure in viewing these shows as something fun to watch on a Friday night. This conditioning carries over into daily life, where human misery is an object of interest and curiosity.
There is also a steady underlying message that these events are the result of personal circumstances, decisions, and events, rather than social structures. From ‘the underclasses’ of the 1880s to ‘poor people’ of the 2010s, consumers of misery-as-entertainment are assured that they are observing The Other, and that only individual interventions are the solution to these social problems. Assured that these are personal, not social, problems, viewers can continue to watch them guilt-free. The observer is not responsible for the events depicted, after all.