Interesting program on the BBC last night called Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. Basically the BBC sent six British young people off to Indonesia and Thailand to work in the food industry that they regularly purchase from. The insight into the food industry there was undoubtedly excellent and worth a prime time broadcast, but the reasoning behind sending along six condescending brats escapes me, and the results were nothing less than cringe-worthy.
Here are Thai and Indonesian people, welcoming tourists and a camera crew into their home, then have those same tourists turn around to tell them how much they pity them and how they should be 'so proud' of what they're doing for their families. If someone came into my home and told me I was comendable for living in what they viewed as an appalling dump, there would be slaps all round.
Of course the working conditions, sex trade and pricing are unjust in these countries, and of course something needs to be done to help spur on the development of industry, agriculture and workers rights in these countries, but it isn't as if the same people working there have no pride. It was nothing less than insulting.
Here's a clip from last night's programme.
Not the best example of what I'm arguing about but still pisses me off.
Some choons throughout the whole thing though.
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2 comments:
Sounds like a really good idea for a program. How long did they live there? Maybe the results would have been different if,instead of putting them in that environment for just a while, they were made to actually live there for at least half a year? I've seen programs like that here in the US where, for example, spoiled city people live like 19th century pioneers for an entire year. And watching their evolution from clueless modern persons to people who really understood what actual pioneers went through, is fascinating.
Something beautiful, btw, about all those fishermen catching fish like that. Far better, anyway, than a huge net catching everything in it's path.
I suppose it was a good program in itself and in it's idea but they were only there for a couple of weeks, and it was also shameless about showing, for example, that they stayed in a four star hotel instead of someone's house which they deemed too stinky.
I don't know, to me they just seemed like a bunch of phoneys.
I totally agree with the fishing thing too. There's a certain grace to it.
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