The melodrama of being a child: NGO representations of poverty

Abstract

This article shows how NGO films deploy melodramatic modes in constructing the narrative arcs of their campaign films and it explores the potential of this mode for generating solidarity between the spectator and the suffering subject. The author analyses how, through the use of music, colour and gesture, a visceral emotional response is evoked that produces an identification of the spectator with the experiences of the suffering subject. She argues that the criticism of melodrama as a mode or genre that substitutes politics with compassion is misplaced; compassion for distant others may be at least as critical to the formation of solidarity as a politically informed understanding of the structural causes of social injury.

Aristotelian Appeals and the Role of Candidate‐Generated Videos in Talent Assessment

“…It is interesting – although perhaps not surprising given previous literature – that the videos embodied more attributes framed by pathos appeals. This is in line with existing research that suggests video's general penchant to communicate emotional qualities (Stiles ; Wells ) and supports assertions regarding the importance of ethos (English et al . ).…”

“…However, fundraising videos and public service adverts are largely characterised by pathos appeals. Economist Karen Wells () suggested that such videos could evoke feelings of solidarity via visceral responses to music, colour and gesture. Similarly, Stile's (, 201) ‘best practices’ for public service announcements can be described by emotive tactics such as authenticity, depicting the protagonist's ‘depth of character’, and with an audience‐focused selection of narrative and imagery.…”

Save the child: Photographed faces and affective transactions in NGO child sponsoring programs

“…This rhetoric was targeted above all at ending widespread child labor in mines, sweatshops, mills, and factories (Wells, 2008(Wells, , 2013, as well as forming a part of the 'civilizing mission' towards peoples in far-flung colonies that many nineteenth-century Europeans regarded as their providential destiny. By the mid-twentieth century, however, that rhetoric had largely been superseded by a rights-based discourse that focused on the 'best interests of the child,' as a basis for legal reforms and policies of Western governments and NGOs (Wells, 2013). The key manifestation of this shift may have been the 1959 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse, and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural, and social life.…”

“…It also reveals a broad adherence to the idea that sponsoring promotes economic development and market principles that foster general ‘thriving.’ Both the name of the organization and the text of the caption, however, turn the action of sponsoring into an act of ‘saving.’ In so doing, the NGO embeds donors’ acts of charity in a rhetoric of child saving that goes back to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Anglo-American world and continental Europe. This rhetoric was targeted above all at ending widespread child labor in mines, sweatshops, mills, and factories (Wells, 2008, 2013), as well as forming a part of the ‘civilizing mission’ towards peoples in far-flung colonies that many nineteenth-century Europeans regarded as their providential destiny. By the mid-twentieth century, however, that rhetoric had largely been superseded by a rights-based discourse that focused on the ‘best interests of the child,’ as a basis for legal reforms and policies of Western governments and NGOs (Wells, 2013).…”

Escenarios emergentes del melodrama en el paisaje audiovisual contemporáneo

“…Tal y como los trabajos precursores de Reguillo y Colón indagaron -a comienzos del siglo XXI-sobre el despliegue discursivo melodramático, más allá de los formatos de la ficción televisiva, hoy encontramos signos alentadores en ese mismo sentido. Trabajos de investigación provenientes de otras áreas de las humanidades y de las ciencias sociales están identificando cómo el modo melodramático está también estructurando discursos noticiosos e incluso discursos de organizaciones de la sociedad civil y la política parlamentaria (Anker, 2014;Griffiths, 2018;Mujica & Bachmann;Wells, 2013).…”