Uneven Development: Listening to the 'South', Listening to Vancouver

***NOTE: this is posted on behalf of Lucinda Yeung since she’s been having problems with UBC Blogs

At the risk of infringing copyright laws, here is the full video to the documentary.  Interestingly enough I was only able to find the full feature in English as opposed to short segments.  You do not need to watch the entire film—I think that the first 20-30 minutes will give you a genderal idea of how the narrative progresses.

Born into Brothels chronicles the project that photographer, Zana Briski, created while doing photographic work on the women working in brothels of Calcutta.  Responding to the childrens’ curiosity for her place in the brothel and for her camera, she began to host classes in photography.  I find the implications of the film’s narrative particularly interesting, considering its genre as a documentary (which I assume can make authoritative claims to ‘objective knowledge’); the success with which the film was received (the most prestigious of which is the 77^th Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature); and its circulation in the ‘Global North’ as a result of its success.

The documentary, alongside with the photographs that the children take, are valuable for representing the spatial patterns of the childrens’ daily life.  How do the children move through the spaces of the city, and in what positions do they do so? How are the children marginalized, socially and spatially?  As a social grouping, children are marginalized from adult society and often excluded from social and spatial environs due to their status as minors.  Personally, I find myself paying more attention to the categories of class, race and gender in a critique of mainstream development, as opposed to age.

The film portrays a particular space of illicit exchange, based on an informal sector of the economy that is not accounted for by the indicators (and, accordingly, by the policies prescribed) in mainstream development. Many features of Calcutta’s Red Light District may be excluded and erased in official maps because it is dominated by a main mode of market exchange that is illegal.  Thus, the social and economic relations that constitute the space of the district are accordingly silenced.   For example, how Avijit’s family earns its livelihood from selling alcohol to customers of the brothel; and how the childrens’ relationship to their family is negotiated around their mothers’ profession (relate how the children speak of the customers who frequent the brothel and who seems to intrude upon the private space of their home) would not be accounted for.  Thus, children occupy a space that is at the margins of society, both socially and legally.  In a way the film is able to make that space visible.

The children move through the district, and perhaps through the brothel in particular, as part of a family, as members of a household, and as labour.  Children like Kochi find work in the brothel, and I get the sense that their income will go towards the family’s livelihood.  In one sense, their status is in one sense marked as providers to the household.  Furthermore, their social status as the children of prostitutes denies them access to parts of the educational system.  This is clear as Zana explains how their social positions hinder them from being accepted into good schools.

What struck me about how children are represented is how the characters in the narrative seem to be fixed in both temporal and spatial terms fixed both temporally and spatially.  This reminded me of Lawson’s critique of how WID have constructed a homogenous ‘Third World woman’ that was associated with a series of ‘technical’ problems.  Lawson problematizes the practice of framing the problems as technical ones rather than gendered and political ones, as it assumes that ‘right development policies’ can be applied as the ‘solution’. Furthermore, the figure of the ‘Third World woman’ was constructed as an altruistic agent of development who will invest in her family and community.  She is entrusted as someone who can realize development’s full potential and thus is the ideal subject of development.  Contending that this approach to development is based on assumptions that equate development with notions of Western modernity, Lawson argues that this about development remain to be situated within mainstream thinking.

Returning to my discussion on how the children are represented in the narrative, does the film engage in creating a homogenous ‘Third World child’?  How are the lives of the children portrayed?  The prints that are available for purchase on the Kids for Cameras website remain the same, many of which are taken at the time documentary was filmed.  The biographies of children on the website portray them to be the same age as when the documentary was made in 2001, accompanied by a picture taken of them at the time when the documentary was made in 2001.  Information on how old the children are now, and what they are doing now is included in a separate page on the side bar, titled “Updated On the Kids of Calcutta”.  Despite the fact that eight years have passed since the film was produced, and the children seem to have been frozen temporally (at the time when they were ten to fourteen-year-olds) and spatially (within the confining space of the brothel, although some of them have moved out of the district to continue their studies in boarding schools and the United States).

How are the adults represented?  What role do the adults seem to play in the children’s lives?  It seems that the film also contributes to a construction of a ‘Third World adult’, or a Third World parent’.  To me, the adults represented in the narrative demonstrate an incapacity and/or an unwillingness to take care of and protect the children.  For example, in one scene viewers become witness to the verbal abuse that Tapasi endures from a woman in the brothel; in another she describes how her father tried to sell her to prostitution; and Avijit speaks of how his father had become incapacitated by his addiction.  Aside from what is being expressed in words, the silences in the film, that is, the moments that are left unexplained and unmediated are equally pronounced in conveying the image of the ‘Third World adult’.  What I find worth mentioning is the scene in which the camera lingers on the image of a young boy chained to a wooden plank.  I was struck by that particular image because the motifs that animate it seem to be burdened with symbolic resonance.  However, no explanations were provided for the viewer to interpret the scene with, and I find myself left to negotiate the charged motifs presented the scene.  Thus, the adults appear to be negligent and indifferent to the children’s condition, and those who do want to make a change in the childrens’ lives appear powerless to do so.  How may the viewers negotiate this homogenized figure of adults of the ‘Third World’ or ‘Global South’ in relation to the photographer, Zana Briski ?  As a character in the narrative, she is depicted in scenes of the film, which I think will inevitably encourage viewers to draw comparisons between the figure of Zana and the adults of the ‘Third World’.  Indeed, in one scene Zana talks about how the children ask her for help.

Finally, I want to consider the film in relation to how it is consumed.  Geographers such as Alison Blunt and Jane Wills In the words of Trinh Minh-ha, how can we ‘speak nearby’ rather than ‘speak for’  the subaltern, so that one can engage in a looking that does not objectify?  Are we looking ‘at’ the subjects, or looking ‘alongside’  them?  On one hand, the photographs that the children take privileges the viewer with access to spatial and social patterns of their lives as they represent it, thus presenting an opportunity to ‘look alongside’ the subaltern.  On the other hand, the film is a production, as mediated by the directors, producers, and editors for a Western audience.  In this sense, the film appears to reinforce the relationships that create unevenness rather than destabilize it.

However, does it use these unequal relations in ways that work towards more equality?  The subtext of the film is obvious: as the children speak of the lack of opportunities, the audience is acutely aware of their power to make education accessible to the children in the context of the not-for-profit organization, Kids With Cameras.  The film embodies a marketing function for the organization and its cause.   The childrens’ photographs are displayed and sold in exhibitions as well as online, and the proceeds from the sale of the prints go towards the education and ‘well-being’.  However, what are the implications of bringing the children into and embedding them in the centre of market exchange?  Does the practice fall into the trap of commodifying the childrens’ personal stories, as described by David Harvey?  This seems to complicate any answer to the question.