In Empire of Illusion: the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle, Chris Hedges makes a convincing, cogent case that American culture has been bankrupted and reduced to six-grade level meaningless fluff, obsessed with celebrity culture, coddled by the simplistic imagery and messaging of the entertainment industry, and having neither the taste nor the stomach for the nuanced complexity of the real world.
I’m glossing over. Hedges excoriates.
I don’t see myself particularly as a critic of American culture. I consume. I watch prime-time television. But Hedges touches nerves with me. What he says rings true. And it especially rings true after my own years of trying unsuccessfully to put into words what disturbs me about the way the aid industry talks about what it does. It rings true as I try to describe the deep chasm the separates aid marketing from aid action.
On page 26 of Empire of Illusion, He writes:
“The veterans saw their wartime experience transformed into an illusion. It became part of the mythic narrative of heroism and patriotic glory sold to the public by the Pentagon’s public relations machine and Hollywood. The reality of war could not compete against the power of the illusion. The truth did not feed the fantasy of war as a ticket to glory, honor, and manhood. The truth did not promote collective self-exaltation. The illusion of war peddled in The Sands of Iwo Jima, like hundreds of other Hollywood war films, worked because it was what the public want to believe about themselves.”
He might as well be talking about aid. He is talking about aid. Myself as a veteran of the aid enterprise, I react viscerally to what Hedges says here. I know it’s true.
There is the real world of international humanitarian aid and development. Then there is the world that the public consumes. And here let us be very clear: “consumes” is precisely the right word.
Because aid is entertainment.
Regardless of what we might or might not do in “the field”, in the context of the modern culture that constitutes our donor public aid is entertainment. It is scripted, produced and sold to a consuming public who consumes it precisely because it is entertaining. They consume entertainment aid because the produced, marketed product delivers an illusion which corresponds to what they want to believe about themselves. Like a visit to Disney World, the interaction between a household charity and an individual donor is increasingly scripted and “produced” to maximize the donor’s “experience.” This is not only what I like to call “the cult of the donor.” Whether they’re receiving a letter of thanks (signed by the CEO), “buying a well” from the gift catalogue, or going on a guided tour of a project they’ve supported in a foreign country, ordinary citizens who support relief and development charities are increasingly purchasing a product, specifically and experience.
The perception of international aid and development in popular culture, too, is carefully scripted as entertainment, as prime-time reality drama that anyone can be part of. Like American Idol or The Fear Factor, “helping the poor” and “making a difference” are just new arenas where anyone can have a shot at 15 minutes of fame. You can collect T-shirts or shoes to send to Africa, you can start a #socent cause that goes viral, you can invent a new widget that will make poverty history, you can start a 501(c)3 with it’s own website and mission statement. In the entertainment world of aid, you, too can be remarkable. You can change the world! Or so the script goes.
Aid is entertainment.
When President Barak Obama wanted a humanitarian perspective on such matters as, say, how to prevent mass atrocities or reduce the amount of sexual violence against women, he didn’t go to the community of professional humanitarian organizations and practitioners. There are surely plenty of real aid workers with significant expertise and experience, not to mention organizations who implement US-grant funded programs to address these exact issues within easy walking distance of the White House. No – in order to get the inside scoop on what’s really going with violence against women in other countries, the leader of the Free World held a private audience with a couple of actors.
Aid is entertainment.
Hedges continues: “Faith in ourselves, in a world of make-believe, is more important than reality. Reality, in fact, is dismissed and shunned as an impediment to success, a form of negativity.”
The real world of international aid and development is not a perfect world. There’s a lot that goes wrong in there, a lot that needs to change and get better. But at least it’s real.
And as unpleasant as it might be we have to make the public understand the reality.
rowanemslieintern
/ January 19, 2012Is this partly a result of development/aid agencies being obsessed with the media? There’s a big focus on getting coverage and on getting the attention of trad media and a great way of doing that is to get celebrities to endorse you which, inevitably, trivialises the whole sector.
Joe Turner
/ January 19, 2012I’m not sure I’d quite go as far as to say that aid is entertainment, but it certainly taps into a deep inner need within ourselves. We want to feel that our lives are more than the mundane, that we can make a difference – and the NGOs (of all types) know that and appeal directly to us on that level. Plying us with a mixed message of guilt, affirmation and simple solutions so that we can dispense with our discomfort and get back to doing whatever-we’d-rather-be-thinking-about.
I suppose there is a point at which an almost religious indulgence tips over into masochistic addiction, and perhaps every organisation is trying to lure unsuspecting supporters into unquestioning devotion.
OK, maybe I’d rather not think of it like that – entertainment might actually be a more palatable description of the donor-NGO relationship..
John Palmkvistt
/ January 19, 2012I think the ideas in the post are accurate and serve as an excellent point of departure. If aid is the CSR function of the wealthy class of humans, then it follows that there will be quite a bit of fiction in the public realm. Like many other disciplines of human endeavor, aid is like sausage: if most people saw all of the steps of how it is made they wouldn’t eat it. It is better for sausage sales to have an inspirational story about happy workers twisting long tubes into wieners. Aid is not as special as many aid practitioners would like to think. Like CSR, it is essential to utilize cunning communication techniques to put on a show which implies that the core activities aren’t all that bad.
Amanda
/ January 20, 2012“… the deep chasm that separates aid marketing from aid action.”
I am currently completing a two-year intensive course in journalism and public relations after doing an undergraduate degree in development. At the institution I study from right now, there is an elective option to study non-profit communications. Otherwise, the underlying assumption is that the same principles of advertising, marketing and public relations are expected to apply to aid marketing. I would really love to learn effective aid communication techniques that go further than that, though. Perspectives like this are cool.
Paul C
/ January 29, 2012As always I agree with everything, which is boring as hell for all concerned. Therefore I’m going to be intensely prejudiced for just a second, with a caveat: just because I don’t like the culture of a particular country, doesn’t mean that I don’t like the people of that country.
This is a problem that has been primarily generated by US entertainment culture, which has been propagated by the US technology sector via the web into a global phenomenon. This was partly what I was getting at in this blog post.
This does not mean that “Americans” are to blame, because America contains a multitude of contrary voices – such as Chris Hedges – and plenty of other people have swallowed that cultural pill whole.
We can take a stand against this, but only if we recognise our part in it. This is particularly true for NGOs (and to a lesser extent the UN), who have decided that this is the way to raise awareness (and funds, of course), without thinking through what it means.
I’m still thinking these things through, so I welcome anybody who wants to debate this. Especially Americans.
Sarah Martin
/ February 11, 2012When I worked in DC, lots of agencies were always trotting out celebrities to speak on behalf of their agency on a topic for congressional hearings. Congressional hearings! Talk about entertainment – what does Mira Sorvino know about trafficking of women except the fact that she acted in a bad tv movie about it?
I know that many NGOs have an office in LA where they can liaise with actors to get them to come out to visit their programs for the media show… and the worst part is that the celebrities don’t pay a dime! Usually the agency picks up the cost. The worst part about knowing this is hearing the true stories of the behavior of these actors who I once naively thought were interesting or good people (Say it ain’t so- Lloyd Dobler!)
The only one that I respect is Angelina Jolie… she does her homework, she stays humble, she uses her own money, and she appears to truly believe in what she does.