Voyeuristic Tourism

One of Gwendolyn Brook's poems that stood out to me in the context of our studies this semester was "The Lovers of the Poor."  Here is a link to the entire poem: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=8681.    The poem describes the "Ladies from the Ladies Betterment League,"  who venture into the city to find suitable poor who are "deserving" of their charity.  While the poem is quite lengthy to discuss in full, I feel that the general concepts employed in this poem relate well to our previous readings of Riis and even of the Midway at the World's Fair.    In the poem, the women in the Betterment League are all wealthy, in their fifties, and of good intentions.  However, they are horrified by the conditions that they find in the city- "the stench, the urine, the cabbage, and dead beans"  and quickly decide that rather than helping these people, they will "find another Slum/some serious, sooty, half-unhappy home"  in which "loathe-love may likelier be invested."   The poem indicates that while these women believe that they want to help the poor, they don't have any conception of how awful conditions really are.  When met with reality, they would rather pretend as if the problems don't exist and find somewhere else to invest their time- somewhere that is "half-unhappy" rather than completely desolate.   Brooks also uses the term "loathe-love" throughout the piece, making for a fun game of tongue-twister (perhaps also to show the complications and difficulty of ameliorating poverty) and also to demonstrate the concept of voyeuristic tourism.  This is to say, the women love to loathe the poor.  They are terrified by the living conditions of the poor, but they feel important and purposeful by visiting them and giving them money.  Thus, they have a "loathe-love" for those they are trying to help.  This is in contrast to true love, which would not include the element of loathing.  Loathe-love ends at the end of the day, when the women return to "Glencoe or Lake Forest," having never really helped to change anything, trying to "avoid inhaling the laden air."   Rather than viewing the poor as people, they view them as objects to be helped because of the sheer shock of their situation.   This is similar to the conundrum we encountered with Riis' work, in which he revealed many of the squalid conditions in New York tenements, yet at the same time, he created his photographs by intruding on families' home lives, often with police escorts to keep him "safe."   In a sense, the people whose stories he was trying to preserve were treated like animals in a zoo, shocking and worthy of attention because of their status as an "other."   While the intentions were good, it could be argued that Riis' efforts parallel those of the ladies in Brooks' poems by minimizing the dignity of the poor in an effort to bring forth the dream of an idealistic bourgeoisie.  Finally, the poem connects to the Midway at the Columbia exposition in a similar manner.  The different exhibits which displayed nations of the world preyed upon the idea of the "other,"  and shock in order to "teach" upper and middle class Americans about other nations (often impoverished countries.)   While originally the intentions of the Midway were anthropological, the goals of the exhibits were transformed into more of a voyeuristic tourism after a switch in management.   Rather than truly come to understand anything about other places and people, perhaps by interacting with them, visitors to the Chicago World's Fair were subjected to fleeting stereotypical images which encouraged a belief in "otherness."   A sense of common humanity or of necessary humanitarian aid was lost in the search for entertainment and a sense of superiority.