Secret Millionaire: The Fairy Godmother Fantasies of the Ruling Class

The promotionals for ABC’s version of Secret Millionaire, yet another UK show being remade in the United States (as well as Australia), promise viewers a series where people with pots of money will ‘go undercover’ to find ‘deserving poor’ in desperate communities across the United States, lavishing them with gifts of money at the end of their brief stays in the slums. Tricks of cinematography show us shiny, glossy, softly-focused lives in mansions with car collections before switching to dark, grimy life in the impoverished communities of the United States, complete with serious mood music to underscore the scenes of gripping poverty.

The show’s debut on Sunday did not disappoint when it comes to poverty porn and slum tourism at its best; the Victorians may have thought they had it nailed, but ABC may have topped them in terms of sheer maudlin schmaltz. This week’s millionaire, Dani Johnson, was tailormade for the show–she went from a childhood of hardship and poverty to being a millionaire by her early 20s. Johnson even helpfully uses the phrase ‘bootstrapping’ multiple times to remind viewers on her stance on making it in the world: If you work hard enough, and deserve it hard enough, you can have anything you want.

Johnson is set to work in Western Heights, a poor community on the outskirts of Knoxville, with $40 and a crappy one bedroom apartment. She makes sure to moan a lot about the heat, a not so subtle complaint about the lack of air conditioning in her new digs. Her mission: To find local organizations to ‘share her wealth’ with, while entertaining millions of ABC viewers.

Every segment includes multiple references to ‘the deserving poor,’ and underscores them throughout the narrative, usually with about as much subtlety as an angry rhinoceros. Dani fills us in on her opinion about who is ‘deserving’ in her discussion about a volunteer at The Love Kitchen, one of the charities she works with during her six day stay in Povertyland. The volunteer talks about her experiences relying on the free meals at The Love Kitchen during a period of poverty, and Dani notes she doesn’t engage in ‘whining, crying, and moping.’ Unlike all those undeserving poor whining, crying, and moping all over the streets of the United States.

At Joy of Music, a school providing low-income children with access to musical education, Dani notes that representatives of the organization are ‘grateful for what they’ve got,’ reminding viewers that they should be pathetically thankful for any scraps of opportunities the wealthy are magnanimous enough to toss their way.

The Joy of Music storyline also underscores a common idea about the deserving poor: that some people ‘have more potential’ and should be lifted out of poverty, which leaves one wondering about the potentialless. Dani wanders a hallway lined with photographs of successful students. The word ‘prodigy’ comes up several times and the organization’s director tells her about the numerous students who have gone on to receive college scholarships for their musical talents. Unlike all those undeserving poor who lack musical abilities, these poor children deserve to be ‘groomed to succeed,’ Dani tells us tearfully as she hands over the cheque.

She also spends time with Special Spaces, an organization that makes over rooms for children with serious illnesses. The politics of focusing on children with disabilities and life threatening illnesses to the exclusion of adults are a separate matter, but the show certainly exploits the sick kid image to the fullest with a maudlin scene where Dani cries (she cries a lot, evidently) as the organization’s founder soothes her, and we meet a child, Daisy, with leukemia. ‘This disease isn’t cheap,’ the founder says.

Dani’s rags to riches story is supposed to inspire viewers, as is the idea of ‘paying it forward’ through donations to community charities (I’d be curious to see a copy of Ms. Johnson’s tax return). What is striking about many of these charities is that they provide what some people believe should be basic services, especially in the case of The Love Kitchen. The heavy reliance on charity to meet the needs of citizens is a growing problem in the United States, as the nation faces epic budget cuts to social services and a steady dismantling of its already shaky community services infrastructure. Even the Victorians managed to figure out that relying on charity to provide social services is a bad idea.

In the case of Daisy, the show doesn’t present it as at all remarkable that a child’s family would have trouble affording her medical care. Perhaps that’s because in the United States, this situation is not at all unusual. Without Dani’s donation of $10,000, it’s likely Daisy wouldn’t have been able to complete her cancer treatments, but the show reduces this to an individual rather than systemic problem of one poor kid with cancer, instead of a nation of millions of sick people without health care. Viewers are left wondering where their secret millionaires are, or if they are too undeserving for a share of the bounty.

Whether Dani felt the need to refer to people being ‘absolutely deserving’ because she was told to do this by ABC or not, her voiceovers constantly reminded viewers that there is a bright and shiny line between deserving and underserving poor, that some people in the United States deserve their lot in communities clotted with abandoned buildings, hunger, and lack of access to educational opportunities. Others go from welfare to riches because they deserve it.

In an era when the Horatio Alger myth has never seemed more ludicrous, as the gap between rich and poor widens at an exponential rate and class mobility moves firmly in only one direction – down –  Secret Millionaire seems, at best, a fairy godmother tale to keep poor people complacent. With the repetition that the United States is a land of opportunity for those who are plucky and stoic enough, the show simultaneously penalises those who are not, and reminds those who are to stay that way. Nose to the grindstone, Johnny! You, too, may benefit for scraps from the table of the ruling classes.

Secret Millionaire leaves (some) viewers feeling comfortable with their class status; they know the ‘model Americans,’ as Dani calls them, will get ahead in life, and who cares about anyone else?