When it comes to movie and television, what's the trouble with distinguishing between "real people" and "real lives"? Is making this distinction a necessity? And where does one draw the line?
I think the danger of filming a musical production about pit latrines, HIV, and malaria in an IDP camp is that doing so displaces issues like poverty and disease from the realm of serious humanitarian concern, emphasizing humour and entertainment in its place.
But this begs the question, is there no place for humour and entertainment in humanitarianism?
As Invisible Children is evidence of, entertainment and humanitarianism together can't be all that bad.
I think most of the impact and consequences, positive and negative, come back to audience members and virtual activists themselves. Each of them ends up taking away from what they see and hear a collection of personally filtered knowledge, understanding, and goals. Dancing and singing about pit latrines, HIV, and malaria in an IDP camp may draw some viewers closer to the reality of a humanitarian crisis, making them feel entertained, interested, and ultimately inspired to do something to help change this situation. This humour, however, also runs the risk of misinforming viewers by de-contextualizing the problems.
Torgovnik argues that "generic representations [of Africa] make the suffering seem inevitable and natural, and moreover, even as they might imply some common humanity linking us all, they also establish a distinction between 'us' and 'them'."
Could the same be said of entertaining representations of "Africa," despite a focus on serious subject matter? Does a musical production about pit latrines, HIV, and malaria make the suffering of internally displaced peoples "seem inevitable and natural"?
I'm drawn back to one of my questions from earlier: where does one draw the line of appropriateness? the line between reality and fiction?
Where and when does the reality of an IDP camp stop being real?
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