Benefits st homework

1. Benefits St and Skint

2. As I was not there to watch ‘The Mighty Redcar’ I can only compare Benefits Street and Skint. Firstly I think. Firstly my main
overview on both shows was that the purpose of both shows was certainly not educate or for people to feel sympathetic
towards the working class, but rather to humiliate them if anything. This comes with little surprise to me personally as they are
both Channel 4 productions and I have always associated this network as a business that thrives on schadenfreude. (I may have
googled that term.) These documentaries only further reinforced these beliefs I had and the whole way throughout I saw each
scene as if it was their purely to mock the working class, although that was my opinion a lot more while watching Benefits
Street. Channel 4 is a Network that is run solely through the use of viewers watching adverts to fun their shows, therefore it
also does make sense that they sensationalise things more to attract viewers, however some may argue that is morally wrong.
In Benefits Street one of the scenes that most made me think their main aim is to humiliate the working class was when they
would show the parent’s swearing around the children but with no dialogue from the narrator as if just to highlight the parent’s
negligence towards their children. This approach is obviously quite unheard of in the homes of the typical viewer of this type of
show, who are probably middle class people who can only imagine such lifestyles and this will lead to them looking down on
working class people. I think Benefits street was bias in the sense that it had one agenda only and that was to belittle the
working class as that’s often what programs on channel 4 do and they stuck to that common theme of embarrassing these
types of people. I think as this show was quite famous at the time it did create a bigger divide between classes, although I think
the main aim of this show was to entertain the middle and upper classes as well as belittle the working class, I also think they
used specific scenes and filmed specific parts to show the worst of the worst that happens on that street, I think it was trying to
represent the working class as a whole but was quite specific to that street.
In comparison I think rather than just to humiliate the working class, I think Skint was to if anything demonise working class
people and show them as genuine bad people. I think the way they largely focused on a working class person who uses drugs
and has a court hearing pending demonstrates how they are just trying to paint he working class generally as bad people, which
they only do as that what fits their agenda and goes along with the show they’re trying to create, which is fairly understandable
as they would generate less views/money if they had a documentary centered around a working class family who are like a
middle class family just with a lower income. However many would say that is morally wrong although Channel 4 probably do
not consider that and will create a documentary that fits their agenda which is usually trying to make a bad example of the
working class.