Born into Brothels (2004) exposes the world to the realities of the sex trade in Calcutta, India. In particular, the children who were born and raised in one of India’s red light district. The film itself was fascinating and difficult at the same time for covering quite a confronting story, however, the filmmakers managed to condense the story to the innocence of the kids.

However, during our class discussion on Friday, many of us had raised more issues than praise for the documentary itself. I remember one time in class we discussed the ethics of adding yourself into structure and narrative of your short doco and how that could potentially change your intention for the film and manipulate your audience to view a particular subject a different way.

In Born into Brothels, director Zana Briski did so in what seemed like a film documenting the lives of the kids, became a story about how she “rescues” them from the oppression and life they’re living through. This is a clear example of the  White Saviour complex where “Western people [go] in to “fix” the problems of struggling nations or people of color without understanding their history, needs, or the region’s current state of affairs.

It’s scary to realise how much people have been heavily influenced by such a rhetoric and people of privilege are either ignorant about this or take full advantage of it. Another example is Kony 2012, where one polished video shared thousands of times on multiple social networks managed to convince hundreds of people to donate and partake in a “movement” to stop warlord Joseph Kony. However, the video itself oversimplified the entirety of the situation that the situation is described as “a humanitarian disaster” where other issues such as “militarization of poorer countries, short-sighted agricultural policies, resource extraction, the propping up of corrupt governments, and the astonishing complexity of long-running violent conflicts over a wide and varied terrain” should be considered. This article by Teju Cole articulates The White Saviour Complex eloquently. 

Surprisingly, Born into Brothels won the 2004 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. the Oscar speech itself reflects just how much the true intention was lost during the filmmaking process.