Preview

Why Is Zana Broski Born Into Brothels

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1670 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Why Is Zana Broski Born Into Brothels
Born into brothels: The reality of children being born into them The documentary, Born into brothels, takes place in Abinash Kaviraj lane, Calcutta, India. Zana Briski, the professional photographer and director in charge of this documentary, shows many different perspectives of the children’s world in the brothels. It takes courage to move out of your own country for several years to go and explore someone else’s ‘’world.’’ She shows many faces of the children’s world and how she taught them photography, and showed them the world outside the brothels. Briski records examples and real life events, we can see the different ways people live and how they treat their children. This documentary can be interpreted in different ways depending …show more content…
Briski targets an audience difficult to get interested in these type of problems such as prostitution or drug addiction. The high upper medium class, or even the middle class are the ones that can help and make a difference in helping these children or families trying to get out of the brothels. They are the ones that can really make a difference in the red light district because they have connections, money, and better surroundings. The high upper class and the medium class are people that do not care or ignore these problems since they do not have anything to do with them or their families. The message of these children asking for help can be seen all throughout the documentary. It is very emotional and heartbreaking to see these children that want to prosper by themselves, with no help from their families. Briski tried to help them but there is not much she can do either. She can at least show us the story of their lives and hope that someone would help them. These children need serious help to get out of the brothels and become someone better for their future. As soon as Briski entered the brothels she met the children. Brothels filled with children, they were everywhere. They were curious and did not understand what she was doing there, she was there to help them succeed and hopefully abandon the brothels. She …show more content…
She is little and cute. She is in the photography class; she is very quiet and shy with the camera. Kochi does the dishes, brings tea, and does errands for her upstairs neighbor (Briski 7:39). Her story is heartbreaking because no child should be doing this type of work, she should be playing with friends and having fun every day. She mops twice a day and she gets paid for doing this. In the evenings if her neighbor wants she does shopping and works until eleven at night. Kochi keeps thinking what she could become is she gets an education and leaves the brothels. She likes the photography class and taking pictures, but she does not like editing them. She feels shy taking pictures in public because people tease her and say mean things. She lives with her grandmother because her mother cannot take care of her. Kochi tells us that her father tried to sell her, and if her sister did not come to get her, she would have been sold. Who knows, if she would have been sold maybe she would have never seen her family ever again. Kochi is worried that she would probably become a prostitute and does not want to. Briski thinks that she is going to be forced into prostitution because she is very shy and never says no. At 4 in the morning Kochi starts cleaning houses with her grandmother, but Kochi works so hard that she has no time to rest or play with her friends. Her mother lost six sons and her husband died too. Kochi is almost by herself since no

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Claire Sterk Summary

    • 128 Words
    • 1 Page

    This reading is based on field-work in the United States on the streets in New York City as well as Atlanta. Claire Sterk is an anthropologist who works in a school of public health and is primarily interested in issues of women's health, it relates to sexual behavior and to prevent sexual transmitted diseases. She describes the basic fieldwork methods she used to study these women and their communities. Like most cultural anthropologists, Sterk's primary goal was to describe the life of prostitution from the women's own point of view. To do this, she had to be patient, brave, sympathetic, trustworthy, curious, and non-judgmental. Fieldwork is a slow process, because it takes time to win people's confidence and to learn their language and way…

    • 128 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This information alone makes for a truly different outlook for the movie. It took all the negative and focused only on that. Zana Briski in documentary even states that the children lives are “doomed” if they do not get away from their homes. Yet there were already this was truly an unethical and slightly immoral to show only the negative part of what happened in red light district; to not even mention the things that people had been doing to make it better. I believe it can be said that Born into Brothels is a powerful film in its ability to tug at the heartstrings of its viewers. To the extent it suggests that the only solutions lie in individual outsiders rescuing individual children, it presents a misleading story and indeed an unnecessarily…

    • 139 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    “In the early 20th century, Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine used the new medium of photography to document the experiences of the working poor. Riis is best known for his investigations of life in 9the New York City tenements, while Hine produced several photo essays on child labor.“ (Ackerman 1)…

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The film makers of Born into Brothels took the opportunity they were given, exploited these children and their families lives in a film that can be viewed worldwide. These children do not know any better, and the film is revealing what the future holds for these children in the Brothels. Although in the film, there were no scenes of violence against these children, or explicit sexuality around them, the film focuses more on the everyday aspects of their lives, and of course on photography. With this being said, their day-to-day activities revolve around running through the streets and taking pictures. These kids have no real future ahead of them. All they know and have in their future is sex work for supporting themselves and their future families.…

    • 347 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    At the time, photojournalism was uncommon because of the complex process of taking pictures. In order to take a picture, one must carry bulky, awkward and heavy equipment. And in this case, the areas being photographed were often dark. So in order for there to be “flash photography” a small explosive must be set off in order to provide the “flash” needed for the photograph. Because of the complex procedure of taking photographs, photojournalism was rare at the time that “How the Other Half Lives” was published. For this reason, most members of the middle and upper classes had never seen a slum. For many, the photographs published by Riis were the first visual account of the horrid living conditions of slums. Because the photographs published in “How the Other Half Lives,” were the first visual account of slum life for many, the shock value of the book…

    • 1318 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel, Looking for Alibrandi, Josie must learn to deal with a whole range of issues. These include her cultural identity, her attitudes to her family and friends, meeting her father for the first time and her acceptance of her place in society. Each of these issues encourages and enables Josie to change and to understand her life and her role in her family and her community more positively.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Born into Brothels documents the lives of eight local children for a on and off period of two years. Zana Briski initially went to India to photograph the prostitutes but when meeting their children came to feel that the children might be saved or given hope by…

    • 2023 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Venkat Rao, from “forty-five a month”, regrets that he is unable to spend time with his family; especially his daughter Shanta. Due to his job, however, there is nothing he can do to remedy this because he needs the money in order to provide them with the necessities of life. Venkat Rao promises to take Shanta to the movies after work since he has not spent time with her in a long time. Shanta “insisted on wearing the thinnest frock and knickers, while her mother wanted to dress her in a long skirt and thick coat” (53) because she wanted to look her best for her father. When his manager does not allow Venkat Rao to leave work on time to take Shanta to the movies, he is determined to quit, believing that [he wasn’t a slave who had sold himself for forty rupees” (55). When he goes to hand in his letter of resignation, however, his manager tells him that he will be getting a raise. Venkat Rao is distraught because he knows that this money will help his family, but he also knows that he will no longer have any time with his family.…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Domestic violence, human trafficking and prostitution has always been around for centuries, it just seems to continue happening everywhere. As shown in the film, “Carissa”, the way the conversation about prostitution was given really made me think about the things she had to do through as a child at the age of 12. Some of the things she stated really shocked me, I’d never given much thought on what is happening in the world right now, all around us. When she talks about her past you can see the pain that still remains within her. It makes me angry knowing that this sort of thing, prostitution between young girls, tend to happen to a lot of kids everywhere. I was also in disbeliefs when Carissa was telling her story. At a very young age she went through various things no…

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Childhood is a crucial time in a person’s life and it needs to be kept innocent and pure for the child’s well-being later in life. The most important recurring theme in the novel Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill is the loss of innocence at a young age and the profound complications later in life. The complete loss of innocence is built-up with multiple different experiences over time. For Baby, these experiences are: when she is first exposed to drug use, when she spends time in foster care and when she becomes engaged in prostitution.…

    • 1586 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jacob Riis was an 1800s-1900s age photographer with a still-frame camera. He was infamously known to stage photos of what he has seen as he explored slums, tenements, factories, and other horrible places. One of the photos he shared with the public was a staged picture of men in a hot, crowded, and extremely unsanitary place, probably a tenement or factory worker quarters. His countless realistic pictures eventually caught the watchful eye of the public and conditions steadily improved over time, finally bringing attention to a nationwide issue (Doc. 1 Jacob Riis’ Photograph) Jacob Riis wasn’t the only one to go above and beyond to bring attention to horrible living/working conditions in…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Reading the different stories and struggles of people from all different lifestyles gave a new perspective on what goes on in the lives of others. The three different stories told in literature and film all captivates audiences of being able to tell the truths that each of these people face. In Americo Parades’s With His Pistol in His Hand, Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, and Natalia Almada’s film, Al Otro Lado: To the Other Side, I saw the struggles of people and the challenges that each person faces in their lives.…

    • 1064 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The term prostitution refers to any situation in which one person pays another for sexual satisfaction or pleasure. In recent discussion of prostitution, a controversial issue has been whether prostitution should be legal or not. Prostitution is the oldest profession existing in the world; it is rapidly growing with or without the government help. After all these year’s prostitution is still looked at as dirty or nasty, many people do not want to face the fact that prostitution exist. However, the prostitutes’ rights movement, begin in the late 1960’s to the early 1970’s. As we know during that timeframe the perspective of women viewed in society was based on gender roles. Women were to stay at home and take care of the kids and house. During…

    • 185 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    India is a country in central Asia with a population of over 1.22 billion people making it the second most populous country in the world. Its high population is one of the factors that results in India having such a high poverty rate. In India today over 37% of the population live below the poverty line. The reality of such a statistic means that these people live in conditions unimaginable to people of the western world. In the film Slumdog Millionaire by director Danny Boyle deeper ideas associated with this poverty are developed including destiny, loyalty and how poverty frees us. These deeper ideas are developed through visual techniques such as colour, lighting, `cinematographic techniques and editing techniques.…

    • 1650 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mirror with a Memory

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Chapter 8 of After the Fact in the article, “The Mirror with a Memory” by James West Davidson and Mark Lytle, the authors tell the story of photography and of a man names Jacob Riis. Riis came from Scandinavia as a young man and moved to the United States. Riis firsthand experienced the bad conditions in the heart of the slums of New York. He worked from place to place, doing odd jobs until he found a job as a police reporter for the New York Tribune. Riis lived in a slum called “The Bend.” When he became a reporter, Riis aspired to make people see the awful conditions of “The Bend.” Riis was continuously disappointed because his articles did not receive much attention or sympathy he was looking for. He then vowed to write a book called How the Other Half Lives. In his book, he would detail all the troubling settings that people were living in. To stir interest, Riis learned that photography was very powerful and made readers reflect and think.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays