Try searching Mississippi on Netflix. What are your results? “The Blind Side?” “The Help?” What else?
Documentaries. Piles of them. Stacks. Towers.
A hot trend in the world of the pop documentary is the tale of Mississippi Poverty. I type that with double capitalization because it refers not to Mississippi poverty, which surrounds us, saddens us and moves us to whatever action we can find to help. Mississippi poverty is the little girls in church that wear the same dresses every Sunday. It is lines at the WIC office; it is schools struggling to stay out of the red and fathers struggling to feed their families. It is ordinary, daily, mundane. It is communities attempting to do the best that they can, neighbors and strangers alike struggling to know how to help. Mississippi poverty is as old as Mississippi itself.
Mississippi Poverty is not mundane. It is sensational. It is inevitably based in race and race alone, and it is painted with the biggest, boldest strokes the director can envision. I will not contest the parallels between Mississippi Poverty and Mississippi poverty. Both are a desperate struggle to stay afloat. Both are based in reality, and both are intensely moving. The difference, though, is that Mississippi Poverty ends when the camera crew leaves.
Sure, the documentary will circulate in progressive circlesin New York and Los Angeles, and sure, those who see it will see a call to action, a call to change. But a week will pass, new responsibilities will come up and the documentary about the great Poverty of Mississippi will fade into a distant, “Oh, I meant to donate to XYZ Foundation!”
Mississippi poverty, on the other hand, will not end any time soon. For Mississippi poverty, a few hundred more people attempting to raise awareness is just a nuisance. Mississippi Poverty is a distraction from Mississippi poverty, custom designed to relieve the wealthy denizens of the more progressive states of the guilt they carry for the fortune of their birth. They become educated on the struggles of OUR communities, and they are absolved of the sin of benefitting from the inequality they so love to post Facebook statuses opposing. Meanwhile, Mississippi poverty continues, the departure of the camera crew a blip on the radar of people who were struggling to get by before Hollywood took an interest in them and who will be struggling to get by long after Hollywood has forgotten them.
If Mississippi Poverty was saving those who suffered from Mississippi poverty I would advocate for (admittedly irritated) acceptance of their continued interest in our great — because regardless of its faults, Mississippi has had a tangible and positive affect on the art and culture of the USA — state. But Mississippi Poverty saves no one. It is entirely self-serving, and it leaves those with the power for real change with a bad taste in their mouths. Who wants to invest in private businesses in a state with sky-high STD rates? “Deepsouth?” Who would advocate improved infrastructure where prom is still segregated? “Prom Night in Mississippi?” Who would promote the interests of community leaders from communities which are, according to Mississippi Poverty, basically remnants of the 1800s? Mississippi needs real help to improve education, build a strong system of infrastructure and to develop the tools it needs to combat poor health and poverty across the state.
Hollywood awareness is precluding that help and that is an issue worth making a movie about.
Cecilia Criddle is a senior International Studies and Spanish major from Pascagoula, Mississippi.
