Film Analysis: No Place Called Home

The film No place called Home provides a realistic illustration of what it is like to be a family living in poverty within Canada. Leslie Harman provides readers with an article that outlines specific definitions and concepts to help illustrate the idea of poverty. These examples help to understand the Rice’s living conditions in the movie entitled “No Place Called Home”. Through understanding Harman’s article as well as various other sociological concepts it can be understood that the Rice family exhibits the characteristics regarding what its like to be living in poverty.
Leslie Harman article provides a framework that distinguished four different types of poverty. The Rice family embodies specific components that Harman outlines in the
“ A family spending more than 55% of its income on food, clothing and shelter is considered poor…The objective poverty definition is not value neutral; it is informed by relative poverty definitions” (Harman, 243). As said above, Kay Rice spends majority of the family’s income on being able to keep the home, thus resulting in her high dependence on second hand clothing and food stamps. With the family making less then $10,00 a year, Kay Rice needs $650 a month meaning that she spends almost $8000 on rent, compromising more then 55% of the income thus, making them a prime example for the concept of objective poverty. Lastly, the idea of subjective poverty can be used to describe Kay Rice’s outlook on her living situation. “I know we are poor, but that does not make us who we are, and that is not who we will be”. According to Harman, subjective poverty “refers to the way people think about their standard of living. A person’s subjective interpretation might not correlate with the objective poverty definition, a person can feel rich, or poor, despite the objective poverty measures” (Harman, 243). Although they are living in poverty Kay Rice refuses to define her family that way and feels lucky to have her children, always making them her first
The first perspective she defines is the functional perspective, this can be characterized by the idea that someone is unable to perform normal tasks. These normal tasks could include, eating, and walking. Doris Hoffer was portrayed to represent the functional perspective, in saying she is unable to complete these everyday task, charactering that she has some type of disability. Next, Owens outlines the concept of Bio-medical perspective, which is when disability is defined as a disease, disorder, and medical condition. Both Bio- medical perspectives and functional perspectives are seen as a biological, cognitive and/or physical malfunction. Then, she looks at the Social/environmental perspective which is characterized by a disability that is presented as the result of barriers in the social environment that prevent persons from full participation in the community. Doris Hoffer has trouble walking, a lot of places in society are not wheelchair accessible, or do not have a ramp for someone who finds it hard to walk up stairs. Doris needed help in completing these tasks like going to the store, going to get food and even walking, stopping her from participating in full in the community. Lastly, Human rights perspective focuses on the respect for human dignity and protection against discrimination and exclusionary practices in the public and private spheres. The