Analysis of The Crisis of Affordable Housing in The Film 'Poverty, Politics and Profit'

Introduction

Rhetorical analysis in arts and literature are common practice and forms part of the director's depiction of the environment in which situations occur. Understanding the history of film directors is critical in helping us understand the context and content in which the majority of the films are produced. The film provides a form of persuasion in elaborating social, economic, and political situations aimed at creating a mental reflection of the effectiveness of movies in underlining societal issues. The film Poverty, Politics, and Profits presents us with an opportunity to review the economics and politics behind U.S. housing schemes. The film direct evaluates the politics, profits, and issues arising from the affordable housing system. In the reader’s mind, we get to understand themes that dictate the affordable housing system. Characterization and the setting used have been applied to depict a narrative sequence that relies on the use of syllogism logic in helping users understand the conditions, causes, and solutions to the affordable housing crisis.

Film Overview

The film Poverty, Politics, and Profit was first introduced on the big screen in 1983 and has continued to document issues facing Americans and the global community. The director, in this case, is more concerned with the issues facing the American population, especially low-income earners who form the majority of minority groups in the country. The setting is based in the U.S., where the author documents the plight faced by low-income earners who cannot afford to house. Unsurprisingly, housing has been a major political and policy issue in the United States, even when billions of dollars have been set aside to provide every American with affordable housing. The film takes an investigative approach into the affordable housing crisis with the question “how did we do the math?” being central to the investigative documentary. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LINTC) program is of significant importance as it lays the backdrop for an evaluation into how politics and business create a toxic environment for the poor.

Rhetorical Analysis

Subject, Setting, and Themes

Rhetoric in the film industry is nothing new and has been used to dictate the use of setting, characterization, and the incorporation of themes that drive the message forward. Rhetoric has also been used in various works of literature, but there is a significant difference in how it is applied in film. Wildfeuer claims that, unlike other literary devices, rhetoric in the film creates a container of meanings that allows the audience to “make conscious connections between what they decipher on-screen and their experiences in the real world”. It, therefore, becomes important to investigate the theoretical approach used and the textual cues incorporated in the film to understand its meaning and uncover intended meanings that affect the larger society. The episode is an investigative piece that involves interview sessions conducted by correspondent Laura Sullivan among low-income individuals living in the United States. The director aims to understand why low-income individuals are finding it difficult to afford affordable housing aimed at documenting growing concerns about the affordable housing crisis. The subject of the investigative piece is the affordable housing crisis among low-income individuals, leading to the theme of poverty and greed as serious issues in the United States. Symbolically, the setting is used as a representation of the state of affairs in the affordable housing crisis, in which case the LINTC program has failed to meet its objectives.

The correspondent, Laura Sullivan, focuses on one major city, Dallas, Texas, where low-income earners have been living in depleted neighborhoods as they cannot afford proper housing. The director’s main aim is to introduce a figured subject that represents a larger concept of homelessness and the affordable housing crisis in the United States. Significantly, this figured subject as an emblem that epitomizes the issues of economic forces, class behavior, differences, and politics of exclusion in the country. As the audience, one cannot help by pinpointing the subject of failed policies and the enactment of capitalistic policies that have left many in poverty. Since the setting is in Dallas, it is no surprise that the director’s and correspondent’s narration of the event reflect, rather blatantly, the values that shape the entire American society. The director has selected Dallas as the main setting for the film as it signifies and documents times and places that will help elaborate the housing crisis even further. It suffices to state that there are practical reasons for using Texas as the setting owing to a large number of low-income earners coming from the Latino minority group. It was important for the director to stick to this specific location to create the narrative’s heart and soul, and this eliminates any alienation that might have occurred from the American population towards the documentary. However, I can easily point out that the setting not only focuses on the physical details but also documents the moral and psychological attitudes faced by any low-income individuals living in the U.S.

Characterization and How Characters are presented

Characterization in the film is crucial as it helps display the complexities and sophistication that underline individual portraits. In this film, the director uses caricatured characters to dictate the multi-faceted psychological impetus of the affordable housing crisis. In most cases, film directors use flat characters, but this has changed owing to a growing demand for the use of complex and sophisticated characters. In the film, the Constable is used to describe the state of affairs in Dallas, and he takes his opportunity by being realistic about the issue of affordable housing. Effectively, this creates imagery as it leaves the audience with a mental interpretation of the situation even though there are short clips that display the dire situation. The use of complex characters also influences imagery as the work is not seen as inferior but an upgrade of the psychological novels in distinguishing between melodramatic and dramatic characterizations. In this case, the director introduced central and minor characters, where the government is the main protagonist. At the same time, low-income earners are secondary characters in the political rhetoric that is the affordable housing crisis.

Significantly, the director has a specific representation of the government and the people it serves as they are both faced by internal and external obstacles. Block, Walter, and Fryzek claim that politicians and governments have central goals that may improve or adversely affect the people they serve, especially when it comes to the extension of financial incentives. In the documentary, the internal and external goals of the governments have been developed through the use of narrative language that enables the audience to follow the story from cause to effect. On the part of the low-income earners, the director has developed their character through the use of the Constable’s own words to help delineate the situation. It’s at this juncture that we get to understand how race, housing programs, and segregation policies on the part of the government have led to the housing crisis. Characterization has also been instrumental in enabling us to understand developers are robbing off poor families through dubious policies that have been passed through Congress.

What the Film wants us to Know

This characterization has been influential in creating an understanding of the flow of the film and how the issues relate to real-world situations. There are questions as to whether the government and private developers are morally inclined to eliminate the affordable housing crisis. According to Block et al., the characterization and the involvement of powerful characters, the government and the developers, points toward the creation of moral heroism, or lack of therein. Henceforth, a plot has been developed in which case incidents and developments have been used to create a narrative pattern that documents the rise of the affordable housing crisis. If the director only claimed that the government and developers have failed, low-income earners in the affordable housing system would be ineffective. However, by elaborating on a combination of factors that lead to developers stealing money dedicated to affordable housing, then we have a plot. The plot tells the story, and in the film, a cause and effect structure appears to explain how poverty, politics, and profits intertwine.

In any film, a plot is used to describe how events are created, shaped, and how they emerge in the lead-up to current situations. The director uses a syllogism of logic, even when interviewing the characters, to create a chronology of corruption, lack of government oversight, and ineffective policy formulations that led to the affordable housing crisis. It suffices to claim that deductive reasoning has been applied to ensure the plot, and the entire film has been conditioned to know the root cause of the issue at hand. Through conditioning, the director wants us to know about the ineffectiveness of the LIHTCP and the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) in creating a spiral effect that allowed developers to steal billions of affordable housing funds. The condition then takes us to the “cause,” which explains the main question that will have been answered in the entire film.

Conclusion

Rhetorical analysis of film is similar to that involved in a literary text. Still, the difference is that in a film, it is important to make observations that relate to the real world. In the film Poverty, Politics, and Profit, the director has introduced a narrative language to provide a story about the affordable housing crisis, in a pace that reveals information and complications in a systematic order. The plot has been well outlined to inform the audience of the cause-effect paradigm that led to the crisis. Importantly, this approach has been crucial in helping the audience follow the story and gained a first-hand perspective about the real situation on the ground.