ABSTRACT

This essay identifies the emergence of the aid exposé documentary, a set of contemporary films that overtly challenge the moral benevolence and economic function of humanitarian and development aid. These films are situated within a broader twenty-first century public critique of aid but constitute an aesthetic divergence from the images of suffering found in the long, intertwined history of visual media and humanitarianism. Against that backdrop, aid exposé films frame themselves as anti-colonial correctives to aid’s structural exclusion, elevating conflicting notions of entrepreneurialism and the process of popular sovereignty. The essay argues that the aid exposé is a malleable genre, mobilised to both consolidate and challenge the conditions of neoliberalism, and thus marks an important popularisation of the ongoing ‘aid debate’.

摘要

本文确定了援助曝光纪录片的出现，这是一组公开挑战人道主义和发展援助的道德仁慈和经济功能的当代电影。这些电影位于 21 世纪对援助的更广泛的公开批评中，但构成了与视觉媒体和人道主义交织的漫长历史中所发现的苦难形象的审美差异。在这种背景下，援助曝光电影将自己塑造成对援助结构性排斥的反殖民矫正，提升了企业家主义和人民主权过程的相互冲突的观念。这篇文章认为，援助揭露是一种可塑的类型，被动员起来巩固和挑战新自由主义的条件，因此标志着正在进行的“援助辩论”的重要普及。