Alice turns right out of her front door to go to school, but she is too frightened to turn left. That's the 'dangerous' end of the street where 'the estate' is. That is where Natalie lives. Natalie doesn't know anyone in the big houses at the 'posh' end of the road. What sets them apart? And what happens when their lives collide?
Cutting Edge: Rich Kid, Poor Kid (Channel 4)
The emotional punch of Zac Beattie’s film Rich Kid, Poor Kid lay in its conjunction of fairytale and grit. It took two girls from the same South London street, one wealthy, one poor, and peeled away their lives and attitudes. It wasn’t a makeover show. It wasn’t exploitative. It wasn’t brow-beating. It confronted the questions ? What are they like? How can we live so close yet be so far removed? ? that tease any resident of a big city where lots of money and not much money sit within a few metres of one another.
The documentary didn’t upend stereotypes, but it did muddy them. Alice (15, the posh one who went to private school and lived in a six-bedroom house) seemed the more mean-minded. She described what she thought a “chav” was (hair scraped back, hooped ear-rings), based on the people in hoodies entering the housing estate on the other side of the street. Natalie, 17, was poor. Her mum was on benefits. Natalie looked after Gaby, her brother, who slept on the living-room floor. The household survived on ￡165 a week. Before the camera alighted on its scarred walls and run-down interior, Natalie indicated her flat and said it “don’t look too shabby to tell you the truth”.
Alice had been told never to turn left on leaving the house. Fear had affected her relationship to her surroundings. Her mother asked her to jump out of the car and buy some ketchup from a store on a nearby estate. “I can’t be arsed to wait in line,” said Alice, but her face spoke of a deeper revulsion. While she fretted about who she knew on the Sunday Times Rich List (while claiming that it was “vulgar” to talk about money), Natalie was trying to get Gaby into a state school. But she was applying too late; it seemed unlikely he would make it.
Natalie’s preconceptions were less hardened than Alice’s: she seemed nicer. Both girls had a defiant, chippy pride and were resistant to Beattie’s questioning: Natalie worried (sensibly as we all know what two-dimensional documentaries normally churn out) that she and her family were going to be represented as “f***ing dirty tramps”. For Alice “the worst case scenario” was that she would end up poor and that her children would have to go to state school. She had just been mugged for the second time in six months and was scornful of the excuses of “having a bad start in life”. You shouldn’t live off benefits, she said, “that’s my money”.
Beattie remonstrated with her that most poor people aren’t muggers. “Yes, but most of them are lazy,” Alice said. “I don’t give a s*** what state school kids do ? they can go and die for all I care.” You don’t mean that, said Beattie. “Oh I mean that,” she snapped. Perhaps it was her taste for amateur theatricals, perhaps she did mean it, she was certainly far ruder about Natalie (“I think she may be a chav”) than Natalie was about her (“she’ll have nice clothes and blonde hair”) before the girls finally met.
When they did they laughed and were sweet with one another. Both chewed gum. Each measured the other up. “Do you have a horse?” asked Natalie. No, replied Alice. “That’s boring innit,” said Natalie. Alice said teenage mothers at boarding school had abortions. Natalie revealed that her father had been shot dead when she was 6 (“That’s really unfortunate,” said Alice). The next day Natalie took Alice through her estate. “Those chavs, as you might call them, are my friends,” Natalie said to Alice. “This is my block. It’s a s***hole, but I like it.”
At Alice’s house, Alice’s mother looked at Natalie with a hard inquisitiveness. Natalie described how to act threateningly, and marvelled at Alice’s garden and piano. She said she didn’t feel as out of place as she thought she would.
Ultimately, Gaby got a proper bed to sleep in and a place at school; Alice said, ashamed, her thoughts about poor people were based in ignorance (oh, don’t become nice Alice!). The fairytale came to an end, if not with a dash of magic, then a sprinkle of understanding. Somehow, this documentary was sensitive and unflinching, perceptive but not platitudinous. Suspicion and prejudice gave way to curiosity and possibly even a new friendship ? which may horrify Alice’s mother.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
which may horrify Alice’s mother!!!!
이 프로그램의 현실감을 가장 잘 살려준 글.
부자집 엄마는 자기 딸이 가난한 집 아이들과
어울리는 것을 좋아하지 않는다...아니 두려워 한다
무슨 더러운 바이러스에 감염이라도 될까봐...
어제 본 다큐멘터리 프로그램.
한동네에 사는 10대 두명을 조명해서 영국의 현실의
단면을 보여준 참으로 보는동안 내내 가슴이 아렸던
프로그램.
가난한 집 소녀...백인이 아니고 (이 말은 앵글로
색슨이 아닌 ) 싱글맘 엄마에 언어가 늦은 동생
그리고 정부 보조금으로 정부 임대 아파트 이름하여
Council Flat에 사는 ...19살 소녀는 15세 학교에서도
퇴학 당했고...
부잣집 소녀...방6개짜리 3층집에 살면서 사립학교에
다니고 가난한 사람은 다 게으르고 사회악 이라고
생각하며 끔직한 것중의 하나가 정부 임대 아파트에
살면서 공립학교에 가는것 이라고...생각하는 소녀
서로 마주할 일도 마주칠 일도 없는 소녀가 프로그램
에서 만나고 서로를 이해하고 서로 담쌓고 살았던
세계(?)로 방문도...
하지만 난 그들의 관계가 이 프로그램 이후로 계속
될지는 의문.
왜...결국 물과 기름처럼 섞이지 못할 것이고
부잣집 부모들은 자기딸이 사회 극빈층과 교류하는
것을 원하지 않는다는 알기 때문에....
영국은 지금도 Class (계급) 이라는 말이 쓰이고
Working Class에도 끼지 못하는 장기 실업 상태의
가계에 살면서 그들의 하류문화 (차브)까지 만들어
냈고....
드라마를 보면서 결코 Rich kid와 거리가 먼, 내
아이들을 어떻게 키워야 할지 많은 걱정이...
그리고 사람 낳고 돈났지 돈났고 사람이 났지 않았을
텐데...이 자본주의에서 자기 품위가 결국 금전에
좌우되는 이 상대적 빈곤감이....
