Re-framing Representations of Aid

by Kathryn Mathers

When FRAMED, a documentary film in the making about the relationship between aid and Africa, ran its successful Kickstarter campaign over the summer 2014, we were thrilled to learn just how much demand there was for this film among both high school and college teachers. This made sense to us, because a big part of our motivation to make the film was the lack of visual and narrative based critiques of images of Africa, and aid and humanitarian discourses. Given the attempt in education circles over the last 20 years to “internationalize Americans,” which is framed (sic), yet again, by the Gates Foundation as a drive to create Global Citizens, these teachers increasingly confront the desire to go out and save the world by their youthful and idealistic charges. And this is exactly where FRAMED is trying to make an impact. Not in order to discourage young people or anybody else from desiring or even trying to save the world, but rather to focus their passions in ways that do not simply support the status quo. This status quo is increasingly seen as a charitable-industrial complex that builds and maintains massive transnational networks of people, finances and programs that primarily serve the interests of Northern-based aid workers and consultants. This charitable-industrial complex weaves a powerful narrative of needs and crisis that often have little to do with the lived experiences of poor people around the world. Such a complex is attractive to the idealism of the incipient activist who can, through social media, easily insert him- or herself into modes of awareness-building, which has become the contemporary version of activism. Teachers, however, can see that this kind of engagement produces deeply troubling stories about others and, ultimately, disappointment for their students who, after their forays into the world, find that they have achieved nothing at all.

FRAMED aims to produce a nuanced and sophisticated picture of how and why certain images of Africa circulate, in the US especially, and how these images help to construct a charitable-industrial complex that will never fundamentally change the inequalities in the world today. FRAMED, therefore, sets for itself a challenging task that does not allow us to follow the expected narratives of films about aid and Africa.

FRAMED is committed to remaining as engaged as possible with everybody who wants to “go save Africa” and yet the film is not telling one-way stories of self-discovery on the continent. Rather it follows Pippa Biddle’s journey back from Africa to tell the story of a young American coming to terms with being a ‘Little White Girl’ after a dispiriting experience as a volunteer in Kenya. We, the filmmakers, are equally committed to engaging with the ways that Africans are changing and building their own communities and societies, be it through national politics or community-based organizations, yet FRAMED refuses to tell a neat story about the challenges facing a non-profit or community-based organization in Africa. The film dives into one particular place on the continent to show people of words and action, like Boniface Mwangi and Binyavanga Wainaina, who are working towards changing the lives of their fellow Kenyans. While FRAMED will also throw down a challenge to the business as usual Hollywood version of Africa and its white saviors, and the consistent misrepresentations of the continent and its people in popular media, it will not be the all-too-easy parody of celebrity projects. This film takes seriously in-depth cultural criticism of such representations by Zine Magubane, an expert in the field.

This deep engagement is what we hope will make FRAMED stand out. So many teachers out there do understand what the film can achieve and ask us when it will be available, when can they show it to their classes. These teachers will make sure that the film has the maximum possible impact. From classroom to classroom, year after year, FRAMED will make young people think a little bit more deeply about why it is that they are in the position to want to help others and what it is that is causing that inequality. And maybe, just maybe, as all of us teachers out there hope, our students will start doing things differently.

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Kathryn Mathers is co-producer of FRAMED and Visiting Assistant Professor in the International Comparative Studies Program at Duke University. Her book Travel, Humanitarianism and Becoming American in Africa (Palgrave 2010) is the foundation for many of the questions raised by this film.