DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS

Analysis of the Documentary the 4th World

Analysis of the Documentary the 4th World

Thesis statement

“It hit the mark in the year 2007, the world witnessed that one billion of its residents had now moved into the slums, a number that was not going to go down easy and without a fight”.

Introduction

The political landscape has changed drastically in the developing world. Wars, revolutions and other forms of political instability have all caused a very heavy impact on the lives of the people. The foremost impact has been on those who are the most vulnerable in the society; without jobs or decent job prospects, without education or the chance of ever getting one, and those who are caught up in the vicious cycle of poverty.

Discussion

The documentary focuses mainly on the populations of the developing world, such as those living in Kenya, Guatemala city and manila. What is interesting to note here that all the three locations have an abundant supply of labor and there are many people cramped in a very small space. The UN estimates that if the mega cities of the world want to keep up with the amount of economic migrants or otherwise that are streaming into the cities, they must construct around 35 million homes in a whole year that makes that around one home being constructed every second. Yet even this mammoth task would not immediately help to alleviate the problems of the slum dwellers and will only contain the tide for a little amount of time. The people mostly living in the slums are the underprivileged and those who were born into poverty. The slum dwellers of Kenya and manila are the ones who haven't benefitted at all from the economic prosperity that has visited their countries in the recent decades. Both the destinations are tourist hotspots, yet the sight of these slums are clearly ignored from the official statistics and chose to focus more on areas frequented by tourists and visitors.

The respective governments in the three countries continue to function in the vein of an exploiting colonial power whose sole aim is to extract personal or collective benefit that appreciate the quality of life of only a particular class of people; a dominant theme that is prevalent in the governments and ruling classes of the three places. The president of Kenya, for instance takes home more salary and benefits, than the German chancellor and yet his country fares as one of the poorest on the poverty index. The dwellers resident in the slums of Nairobi on the other hand live around a dollar per day.

The slums then, after suffering from official apathy have developed a culture of their own; a culture where crime is rampant, people believe that they ought to make ends meet by whatever the means. The case of the Guatemalan woman salma immediately comes to attention. At the age of eight she was prostituted to other men by her mother, and after her refusal, she was severely beaten and abused in ...