Poor People As Tourist Attractions
The man from Talking Heads, David Byrne, once famously said, "In the future rich people will travel great distances to look at poor people," and this is true, now more than ever. You can't switch on the news without hearing about some "concerned" celebrity taking time off from a busy schedule of being waited on hand and foot to tour a part of the world where people have to travel 16 years to fetch a bucket of water. Cue: patronosing smiles from said celebrity toward the objectified image of poverty followed by disadvantaged children smiling back (because, after all, they won't have heard their latest album).
Article 14: March 17, 2007
From Madonna to Brad Pitt. From Angelina Joli to Mia Farrow, they're all pursuing the latest fashionable personal-relations exercise that is travelling to some disadvantaged country, stooping down to touch starving children and then maybe even taking one of these rarities back home! To them, third-world countries are a Disney World theme-park where (because you are rich enough) you can actually fucking take Mickey Mouse home with you! Photographers also sometimes come along (read: invited) to capture those beautiful moments when you realise that There's More To Life Than Money (patent pending).
These are celebrities who have become so intolerably bored with being so fucking self-involved, unmentionably greedy, and self-serving for so many years, that visiting poor people in faraway countries has become a welcomed relief, a fucking leisure activity. Even Lindsey Lohan has jumped on the bandwagon! She's taken some valuable time off from spending a mortgage on a weekend break in a Hollywood rehab facility to look at Poor People. Bless her cotton (Versace) socks!
Here comes the serious bit: this latest celebrity trend will not solve any problems in any disadvantaged, third-world countries but only serve as a distraction from the colossal crimes committed in these parts of the world. Shaking hands with a dying orphan, or petting the bulbous head of a starving African will not solve the wider issues of corrupt leadership and ignorance. Leave the charity work to the hundreds upon thousands of missionaries who travel to these parts of the world to donate most of their lives without any kind of thanks. And they don't have a BMW Jeep waiting for them at LAX on their return home.
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