From the BBC’s The Scheme to Channel 4’s Benefits Street an entire genre of television programme has developed in recent years focusing on the lives of benefit claimants. Most people on benefits would probably have hoped that that would be a positive development. Sadly it has simply opened up another front in the war against the poorest and most vulnerable, and in fact many who are not so poor and vulnerable but who have to rely on benefits from time to time.
Let me point out straight away that despite having used the term “poverty porn” I’m not keen on it. I think there is something flippant about it and I also think it underestimates the seriousness of what’s actually happening. Pornography, at least the legal stuff, ranges from the mildly titillating to the completely degrading but “poverty porn” is worse than that. It’s only degrading at its best much of it is either purposefully or unintentionally propaganda directed against great swathes of the population and against the very concept of welfare provision. It’s not pornography it’s class warfare.
It all plays perfectly into the hands of Iain Duncan Smith et al in their crusade against benefit claimants. Why would people be up in arms to defend the vulnerable and poor if the vulnerable and poor are a bunch of no good malingering wasters or even fraudsters? Why would people in work defend those out of work if those out of work are living a life of luxury at the expense of hard working tax payers? Well of course they wouldn’t.
To that end the propaganda has succeeded. There has been a vitriolic response from many people against benefit claimants on social media, disabled people have been physically attacked and the perception many people have of the welfare state is that most of the people on benefits are either work shy layabouts or fraudsters.
The debate over the last year or so has centred on Channel 4’s Benefits Street. Charlie Brooker writing in The Guardian (12/01/14) summed up the controversy –
“Benefits Street has caused a row with several distinct yet interwoven strands. Some on the left think it’s an offensive and misleading example of “poverty porn”, which is just like regular porn, minus the money shots. Some on the right believe it’s a damning indictment of the welfare state. And some people, brimming with unfocused rage, see it as a televised “scum zoo” full of pariahs for them to fling peanuts and hashtags at.”
He goes on to argue that the programme shows some “authentic community spirit”. Even the odious Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, in a discussion with Ralph Lee, Head of factual programming at Channel 4 (italics added by me because of the obvious irony), and Owen Jones, Head of being a token left wing voice in the mainstream media, said he warmed to the characters in Benefit Street. And yes, before you ask, Fraser Nelson did call the people in the programme characters and not in a “oh he’s a right character him” kind of way. To be fair to upper classholes like Fraser Nelson the people in programmes of this sort are probably so far removed from their daily experience that they seem like some awful Dickensian characters, like Bill Sikes or the charwoman in A Christmas Carol, who can’t possibly be real.
You may have seen this Channel 4 programme and perhaps you were angered by its portrayal of benefit claimants. If so I’ve got bad news for – Benefits Street is not only the tip of an enormous iceberg but it’s also one of the least offensive and least negative examples of the genre. Brooker is probably not so far from the truth when he argues that the title Benefits Street is the problem and that it was “cynically chosen to push buttons, and that ploy has worked. It hangs over the show like a fart at the start of a folk song, changing the tone of all that follows.”
Skint, also by Ch4 is similar in that it’s not an all out attack although it is certainly worse than Benefits Street. There is still some room for compassion and it’s possible to imagine someone watching the trials and tribulations of Richie from Grimsby, who really is a right character, in series 2 episode 2 without being so full of hatred for him they’d want him to die. At the start of the episode we’re told that he has been sanctioned for not being able to fill in a form properly and that the “demon drink has laid Richie pretty low and being sanctioned is an extra kick in the teeth.”
Geoff, another denizen of Grimsby (the whole episode is set in the town and it really puts the grim in Grimsby), has been a fisherman for 40 years. He has recently had to sign on and complains about “Polish or Latvian bastards … taking my work”. Which beautifully ties in unemployment with immigration while at the same time playing into the racist white working class myth. The producers, director and Ralph Lee Head of factual nonsense at Channel 4, must have had a massive group orgasm when Geoff said that.
But Geoff doesn’t stop there. He points out he’s rarely had to sign on over the years, although it is always a possibility for fishermen, and that when you sign on “they look at you like you’re a piece of shit.” That, I’m sure, will resonate with many people who have signed on.
In moments of decency the programme shows genuine warmth between people. Richie for example wants to go into rehab and get off the drink for the sake of his daughter and Geoff, despite also having a drinking problem, has a good home life with his long term, and fully employed, partner. It also points out that Grimsby has just one Youth Centre, strapped for cash as it has had to replace its roof. Surely what’s remarkable about a town like Grimsby isn’t that it has characters like Richie and Geoff but that given high unemployment and a lack of resources it doesn’t have a lot more of them.
But before you heave a sigh of relief and say “all that doesn’t sound too bad” wait! Channel 4’s offerings are just the warm up act. When it comes to attacking the poor, unemployed, disabled and benefit claimants in general they can’t compete with the masters of the craft – Channel 5. If all this stuff is “poverty porn” then Channel 4 are mere dabblers in soft core, Channel 5 makes the hard stuff.
They make televisual garbage like On Benefits and Proud. If the title doesn’t give away the tenor of the programme the tag line on the website should tell you exactly what you’re supposed to get from this guff – “Not in Work … but working the system”.
This ‘documentary’ from 2013 begins with Heather a single mum of 11, yes eleven, kids. I added the emphasis to give you an idea of what watching the programme is like. Every time we see Heather we are reminded she has eleven kids by 3 men and we’re told to feel shocked, as if she’s just raped a puppy. In fact Channel 5’s “poverty porn” continually reminds you to be shocked. It uses the words benefit or benefits absolutely relentlessly. For example in another of its offerings Benefits Britain: Life on the dole the viewer is bombarded with phrases like “Benefits house” (that’s a house paid for with housing benefit), “Benefits flat” (likewise) and my favourite “Benefits buddy” (I think that’s a buddy who is also on benefits rather than a buddy who is provided by the welfare state) as if people on the dole shouldn’t be allowed to have friends.
Unlike Channel 4’s efforts in this genre Channel 5’s “Benefits” stable of programmes have no room whatsoever for warmth or compassion. This is where Charlie Brooker’s phrase “scum zoo” really comes into its own. It’s not just that we’re not supposed to feel for the people in these programmes we’re actively discouraged from it. The characters in Channel 5’s “scum zoo” fall broadly into two types 1 – those to be vilified and reviled because they are so good at playing the system and so blatant and open about it and 2 – those we are supposed to laugh at while they cavort for our amusement. Don’t be fooled by the second type, we are continually reminded, their inability to play the system no matter how hard they try might render them amusing but they are still scum so don’t feel pity for them just because they are about to be evicted.
Heather, mother of eleven, is clearly an example of the first type. She knows how to work the system and gets 3 times the average wage in benefits. She was labelled the Dole Queen by the press. Lorna, in Benefits Britain, is an example of the second type. She is a “benefits mum” and is about to be evicted from her “benefits house” due to massive rent arrears. We are to find her funny because she believes there is paranormal activity in the house and that she has been groped by a ghost. Untypically for a type 2 she actually wins her case and avoids eviction. This leads to her and her “bezzie benefits mate” celebrating a “benefits victory”.
The use of language, particular words and phrases, tags, to elicit a negative response is absolutely constant in Channel 5’s output. From the title – On Benefits and Proud, to tag lines like “not working but working the system” to phrases like “benefits house” and “benefits buddy”. It is ceaseless.
If all that isn’t bad enough there’s more. Gypsies On Benefits & Proud is a variant on the established theme. The tag line on the website is “An insight into how easily gypsies can get their hands on benefits.” Staggering stuff.
I can imagine the day they came up with this show:
Lucinda: I just had a thought! Oh! Now it’s an idea.
Oliver: Everyone quiet! Lucinda is having an idea. Go on Lucinda tell us what it is.
Lucinda: Um … wait … no … ah … yes! What if instead of attacking people on benefits or gypsies … um what if we attacked gypsies on benefits?!
Oliver: Genius!
Orgasmic waves ripple through the office. It probably took days to clean up. Not that they would have cleaned it up themselves no that would have been left to cleaners on benefits and proud.
Unlike Channel 4 there isn’t even the pretence of objectivity here. This stuff is aimed at bringing out the worst in people. And it succeeds. For example here are some comments made on the you tube version of a Channel 5 show called Benefit Brits by the Sea:
Dan Survivor: Benefits should be stopped full stop.
Alex Bradley: This makes me so fucking angry. Working my ass off … whilst I’m at uni just so I can fucking eat and these losers just get money for doing nothing.
MsFanmail: I hate people like this getting our money they get from the taxpayers who work they moan they don’t have money for food but seem to have money to get tattoos and cigarettes alcohol drugs etc.
Adam C: … fucking retards.
There’s even one, an American, who can’t claim benefits but who still has a pop at people on benefits and who is stunned that people living in a seasonal town don’t move away at the end of the tourist season “You’re not a tree!” You tube is full of this vitriol. Insults, anger even death threats.
The comments that many of these idiots make proves the effectiveness of these programmes. A few people who are extreme examples of benefit claimants are presented simply as benefit claimants. No one says “this is what benefit claimants are like” but if every example is an extreme example then the impression is that that’s what they are all like. They are all up to no good, they are all taking advantage of the system, they are all claiming vast amounts of money and defrauding the system and they are all criminals. On Newsnight Owen Jones pointed out that when surveyed people thought 27% of benefit claims were fraudulent when in fact only 0.7% are fraudulent. He also pointed out that people think the majority of claimants are unemployed when in fact most are in work.
These “poverty porn” programmes are made by middle or even upper class people who have no experience of poverty or life on benefits. They are playing with people’s lives and playing into a dangerous narrative that wants everyone to see the welfare state as a problem rather than as a symptom of an economic system that fails a large chunk of the population even in the good times. If people accept that narrative the welfare state will be swept away then, sadly, many of the same people on social media who attacked it and made its destruction possible will have no safety net to fall into the next time there is an economic downturn.
On Newsnight Kirsty Wark asked Owen Jones “should they be denied their voice?” It’s not our voice Kirsty it’s the voice of middle class TV producers who know nothing about the lives of benefit claimants.
skint and angry 