being somebody
Dan Brekke recently blogged about his encounter with a homeless man on the streets of Berkeley, California.
The teaser link to the post on the Salon.com homepage reads, ‘The homeless man I helped was once “somebody”’.
One reader posted comment about this title (though, presumably, Brekke didn’t write it) and how it undermines the empathetic tone of the article. Another reader criticised the writer for exposing a vulnerable man who has made the choice to disappear from the people in his world.
I think the use of the term ‘somebody’ is less an assumption that homeless people aren’t human and more a play on the public’s addiction to fame. People read NW because it publishes goss on famous ‘sombodies’ rather than average Joe ‘nobodies’. The tale of a homeless person who has been ‘somebody’ is intoxicating for a storyteller. Whatever their fall from grace (if indeed, one considers the alternative ‘grace’), it’s got to be dramatic. Sometimes the truth is better than fiction. And there’s no better crowd-pleaser than a true story.
Upon reading Brekke’s post, I began to question myself and the role of my writing. I have often thought about doing some vox pops with people living on the streets for a feature that would humanise the face of homelessness. I think many of the prejudices the general public have about the homeless stem from an inability to relate to those people who live within and yet so far from the world we inhabit.
But I have never pursued this proposal with the gusto with which I usually approach interviews. Why? Because I am just as bound by my prejudices as everyone else.
As a petite, unathletic female, the physical threat of being put in a powerless position in the face of an assault is probably foremost in my mind. But where did this notion that all people who live on the streets are violent and misogynistic come from? Am I just as worried about being attacked by a man in a suit on George St?
The other hindrance was my conscience. Whichever way I turned it, the story felt like exploitation. Why should these people be expected to become monkeys in a cage for the voyeuristic purposes of my audience? Why did I expect that they would want to tell me their life story? Can the secrets of strangers be bought? And at what price? Why shouldn’t the homeless man’s price be higher than the successful businessman’s?
I’ve come to realise that all writing involves some kind of exploitation. The subject is always vulnerable, always exposed, in the hands of the writer.
In my journalism classes, it was always emphasised that, if we were getting information for an article, we MUST identify ourselves as journalists. The fact that Brekke didn’t have the homeless man’s consent to identify him publicly blurs the line of journalistic integrity regardless of his intentions. But blogging poses problems for writers because of its informality. If I write about a cup of coffee I have at a café, do I have to warn the barrista? ‘Hey, better make it good, I’m a blogger!’ Or perhaps I should stick a disclaimer to the fridge at home? ‘WARNING: this house is inhabited by a blogger. Anything you say can and will be used against you on Tumblr’.
Ah, blogs, bringing new complications into the journalistic world every day …
photo / pmartike / stock.xchang
3 years ago • 0 notes