Cameras and Strangers

Arguably, the overarching theme in the film “Stranger with a Camera” motions us to consider how people view their own communities and how foreign media groups decide to depict them. Despite dire circumstances in any one particular region, the narrator supports that there may still linger ties that bind communities as a whole, and those ties are not necessarily positive, especially when originating from the rich as apposed to the poor. In retrospect I agree that Hugh and his team behaved obliviously that September day by not identifying the immediate details and dangers at hand, namely they were trespassing private property and failed to recognize that some Kentucky townspeople might find it offending or oven threatening that the group was harvesting only images of poverty.

The documentary noted that not everyone was extremely poor in that community, nevertheless the majority of people were. This undeniable fact attracted many media crews like Hugh’s to the area to try to reveal to the outside world sharp contrasts in what constituted the American dream at the time. The issue of shame was prevalent all throughout the film, in particular shame experienced by some poor folks in being portrayed in their dire conditions before their own community, and the shame the not-so-poor felt when they objected to being considered poor or blamed for others’ misery owing to the fact they lived in the same community. While some appreciated truths being unveiled to the outside world, others condemned them.

This is all too reminiscent of common media stories of African countries where articles in western papers depict mainly AIDS and poverty in Africa, or something related to misery in Africa. Success stories are lucky if they get published, yet success is a tricky word to use when referring to the other side of say nutritional, economic, and opportunity poverty.

Some in Kentucky may have considered themselves successful because they were not poor, but how do we reconcile the noted fact that someone’s fiscal richness directly related to another’s lack of adequate nutrition, for example? The problem was there; Hugh and his team simply did not go out of their way to truly understand how everyone felt so as to gain their trust whereby he meant only to reveal injustices. From what was observed, he was not able to portray to all the inhabitants, rich and poor, that he meant not to ridicule or shame, but to help them and others outside perceive the gravity of their situation; often outsiders can offer another, maybe even beneficial point of view that insiders fail to grasp. Having said that, outsiders should not bypass some members in order to get to the raw footage, and certainly not distort or misrepresent images to try to allocate them into perfectly constructed hypotheses of what they hoped to see.