Interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about poverty tourism:
Airplanes landing at the international airport at Mumbai(Bombay) barely miss the corrugated shantytown rooftops crowding the end of the runway. For many visitors, this is their closest encounter with the reality facing more than half of Mumbai’s 18 million citizens. But since the success of “Slumdog Millionaire,” slum tourism is on the rise here.
It is ironic that the ugliest part of Mumbai is what is attracting tourism. Maybe poverty porn is the correct term for this even though I really dislike that term. If people get encouraged to visit a place because of "Slumdog" which shows slums, poverty, religious violence, torture, and police corruption among other things then there is clearly some sort of perversion among all this. Perversion in finding beauty in the darkest elements of human life. Maybe it is people coming over to compete in a quiz show, or people that want to participate in choreographed song and dance. Which is it?
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