User:Manetta/error-in-the-system

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abstract: (is coming)

In the film Enjoy Poverty, Renzo Martens depicts African plantation workers next to working journalists and NGO's (Non Governmental Organisations) from the west. Martens frames poverty as the main resource of Africa, where all characters in the film are living in or with. Local workers suffer, journalists take pictures, land-owners make art, unicef-workers help, charity-workers help, children die, and the local African photographers make pictures of weddings and birthdays. Renzo Martens makes art out of it by telling the local people to accept and enjoy the poverty they are living in and recognise their poverty as a resourse to be exploited. It's the recursive and ironic aspect of the film.

Martens went to Africa with an aim to deliver aid to the poor. As Martens is born in the Netherlands, his film is made from a western perspective and improving poverty could be seen as a western common duty. And by execute this duty both with this film and in the film, Martens reveals the paradox of the western aid-ideology. In the aim to help the poor in Africa, is always an element of self-satisfaction included. Shooting photographs of horrible situations in the name of journalism, and making $300 per picture. Providing sheets to cover for the rain, but with the Unicef logo on it. And so you could say that making a film in Africa (and probably being funded for it), but showing it in the west only, is part of this paradox as well. As so is providing a diner for a poor workers-family, shooting dying children with grieving mothers, and training the local photographers there, while shooting footage for the Enjoy Poverty film.

The Slovenian Marxian philosopher, and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek gives an introduction on the term 'ideology' in The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), directed by Sophie Fiennes. By using examples from Hollywood films, Žižek shows how we all live with and within ideologies. One of examples is the (Hollywood) film They Live, directed by John Carpenter in 1988, in which the main character John Nada finds sunglasses that reveal a world which is not visible for the eye: it reveals the ideology that he has been directed by without being aware of it. From the moment that John Nada is confronted with that world he is disillusionated.

How is the effect that the sunglasses have in They Live related to the effect of Renzo Martens' Enjoy Poverty?

Martens' artwork ENJOY POVERTY and the plantation workers John Nada's sunglasses function as what Zizek calls "critical ideology glasses"[1] which allow you to see the hidden intentions of the propaganda in the city. When looking through the glasses, the content of the posters, ads, books and newspapers are replaced with a white background and words like 'obey', 'consume', 'watch tv', 'sleep', 'submit', and 'buy'. Words that speak to its reader in the imperative mood.

The title of Martens' film 'Enjoy Poverty' is written in the same imperative mood. He also uses these two words for the artwork he presents in Africa: a wooden frame with the words 'Enjoy Poverty' made out of neon-light-tubes. Just as the words reveal the ideology of the media and surroundings of John Nada, the words 'Enjoy Poverty' do reveal the western ideology of Martens to the African workers.

Martens' film could be divided into three parts: starting with a look into the life of poverty of African plantation workers, followed by showing how that poverty is mediated by the western world. In the third part of the film, Martens' role is changed from a film-maker who asks questions, into the western white guy (that he is) visiting Congo and wanting to help the African people (that we assume he wants to). In this last section, Martens organizes an opening party for the unveiling of his art piece Enjoy Poverty. Both local plantation workers and western press are present at the evening.

While presenting his artwork, Martens explains the plantation workers that he made this piece "to tell you that you should be happy about poverty, and not suffer from it" because "that will make you unhappy for your whole life". [2] The men don't seem to get his point, and Martens continues in his optimistic tone: "you're also people that aid the rest of the world" and "we need to show that Africa is able to work from their own resources", which is poverty. And although these utterances sound very harsh, the workers seem to do not get Martens' point. In stead of an angry reaction, one of the workers asks Martens if the film wil be broadcasted in Africa. "No" is the answer.

By saying 'Enjoy Poverty' to his African public, Martens is speaking from the same position as the words appear in 'They Live'; revealing the ideology of an external party. It isn't an ideology created by the workers themselves, but dictated by a blank western guy.

The disillusionated reaction of John Nada on the world through his sunglasses comes back in Martens' film. Martens was the guy who had been filming and training some of the workers, and for them Martens didn't seem to do any harm to them. But at the moment Martens explains his work, the workers look with disillusion in their eyes. "When you put the glasses on, you see dictatorship (…). The glasses will make [the viewer] see the truth" Žižek states, "but the truth could be painful and show you your illusions, this is a paradox we must except" [1].

Martens contronts the workers with a reality the western world created for them. The cynical aspect of it is that they have no influence on it themselves. The workers are just poor. And so Martens sees no other way out than telling them to enjoy that situation. They stay behind in disillusion.

Martens' artwork ENJOY POVERTY and the west At the same time, 'Enjoy Poverty' does also speak to the place where Martens' film will be screened: the western world.

The different western persons in Martens' film are in Africa with different ideologic aims: to provide medical help (Doctors without Borders), to fight for peace (UN), or to report on the situation (journalists). These are all aims with Africa as its subject. These people are all connected with Africa either because of their jobs or their desire to do something good. It is the quesiton if the present journalists at the openings evening recognize 'Enjoy Poverty' as their own ideology. How is the moment of disillusion in They Live related to the confrontation of a western person with the artwork?

At the moment we watch through the sunglasses in the film They Live, we recognize the painful connotations of the revealed world. Painful, because nobody would be happy to not know that he/she is been dictated by a higher force. Today it is a common sense for most of the people that advertisements and packaging contain this layer of dictating forces: it are characteristics of capitalism. If we would look through John Nada's sunglasses to the world of today would not be that surprising anymore, though still revealing.

Zizek takes it one step further, and recognizes a new strategic and ideologic layer in the relation between buyer and company, which he calls 'cultural capitalism'. In this form of capitalism of today, shops include (western) ideologic duties in their products. So "if you buy something, the charity act is already included"[3]. Zizek takes the coffee company Starbucks as an example, where "you are buying into something bigger then only a cup of coffee"[3], as you buy fair-trade coffee that will increase the working conditions of the coffee-farmers and, you do something good for the environment. It is what Zizek calls "semantic over investment". You do not buy jst a cup of coffee, "you fulfill a series of ethical duties at the same time".[3]

If we relate those analysis to Martens' artwork, it is possible to make an ironic turn. After watching Martens' film as a western audience—and in the context of a western art course—it releases worries, it opened up eyes, and it raises question which are hard to answer. And as the film is not providing a specific question to answer, possible options pop up: should the west want to interact with Africa? As there is so much money in the west, should we need to feel the urge to provide aid there? But if we now take a look at ourselves, the viewers of the film, and go one step higher on the meta-level-stairs, we could also be critical on that position. Isn't the act of seeing this film a form of Zizek's "semantic over investment"? Don't we watch Renzo Martens' film and "fulfill a series of ethical duties at the same time"? Don't we feel better afterwards, because we took the fime to think about the issue?

'ENJOY POVERTY' as the relation between Africa and the west And as we are living in a world where we do interact with eachother, there is no option to stay at your own site, and do not bother at all with different countries and people. Because we need the other, either for resources we can't provide in the west like coffee, tea or sugar. And without the journalists, nobody would know anything about suppressed communities or corrupt political situations, which might be alleviate with military help.

But non of them does provide better living conditions for the plantation workers on the long term. The poor stay poor. Poorness is part of the bigger (global) system. But should we accept that, or, could we accept that?

Zizek warns us here. From the example of a film in which a man buys himself a new life at a professional company, Zizek makes a remark on the kind of dreams we have: "We should draw a line (…) between those which are the right dreams, pointing towards a dimension effectively beyond our existing society, and the wrong dreams, the dreams which are just an idealized consumerist reflection, mirror image of our society."

Wouldn't 'Enjoy Poverty' be a wrong dream?

Although the west is providing their help to Africa, it doesn't really help the plantation workers in Africa itself. And so Martens confrontates the workers, the western journalist and most of all, the viewers of his film with a dilemma: how to position yourself towards this error in the global system.

[1] The Pervert's Guide to Ideology — Sophie Fiennes, Slavoj Zizek (2012)
[2] Renzo Martens in Enjoy Poverty (2008)
[3] First Tragedy Then as Farce, RSA Animate, youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g