How The Savior Complex Hurts Us All
March 29, 2008 by pablo
While I was raising funds and awareness for Runnin’ At Midnite a common criticism I received was that I was trying to fill inner-city kids heads with unrealistic dreams and aspirations of being actors or filmmakers. Their thinking went something like this: these kids are trying to survive day-by-day, and here I come with all these ideas and opportunities and then “whoosh”, I’m gone, and the kids are left with their previous lives, which may or may not be more daunting than before.
My first reaction to those remarks was anger. Not the healthiest reaction, I realize, but that’s how it went down. Who are they to say who or who can’t be actors or filmmakers? How can we limit these kids dreams and desires before they’ve even had a chance to explore them? But I’m a realist, and I know that it is a rare few that make it in the arts, all things being equal, much less someone with the deck stacked against them. But I think those people are missing the point.
I didn’t want RAM to “save” people. I don’t think it did. And I know Libertad won’t, just like many of the other educational organizations I’ve worked with haven’t “saved” people. The savior complex for an artist or an organization is a very dangerous one, and one that I will avoid at all costs. To assume you have reached that all-mighty status to “save” someone from their realities is 1) extremely egotistical, and 2) it totally devalues the self-determination and abilities of that person.
In my other jobs I work with all of volunteers who often times come with the savior mentality, ready to work with kids with tattered clothes and smeared faces. And often times that is not what they get. Not all kids fit the “Angels With Dirty Faces” stereotype. But does that mean they don’t need mentoring just as bad as the kids that do? Does that mean that they don’t have the same difficulties, challenges, and problems? Of course they have them, and yes, they need mentoring.
So back to my projects. When I enter a community, like the one we worked with on RAM, I am there to provide opportunities. That is the essence of our educational models. What people do with those opportunities, that is up to them. Many kids took the opportunities and ran with it. Some kids didn’t. Do I think that we failed because each and every kid we worked with didn’t thrive in some capacity after the project ended? No way. I take solace in the fact that, for three weeks, they were presented with an amazing window into the life of a working artist, and had a chance to do something special. If someone told me x kid wouldn’t take some of the things he learned while being mentored during RAM and run with it afterwards, would that someone make me not want to include that kid? No way.
I am in love with providing everyone the same opportunities, and pledge to them to help them how I can after the project is over. There are plenty of sustainable organizations that provide a different kind of mentoring: Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA, Los Artes, etc. We can’t (and don’t want to) replicate that. What we do is quite different. We engage kids against the backdrop of a very real project, and that realness allows them to see that no, we aren’t doing this because we have to; and yes, we have to perform and make a great product or else our own art suffers; what does this tell a kid? I feel it provides a legitimacy to our efforts; this is not charity. We are not here to save you. We want to provide you these opportunities because we think everyone should have them, and you haven’t, so here you go. Run with us and we’ll run with you.
As Libertad approaches I’m sure many of the same criticisms will start to pop up again, which is good and provides for healthy debate. But at the end of the day I know that I’m not a savior. I am no different than the kids we will be working with - the only difference is that I was born to a different set of circumstances, and allowed certain opportunities.
This is my way of repaying the Universe for that tremendous luck. It’s not a gamble because I don’t look for outcomes. What I look for is within myself: did i do all i could to make sure these kids had the best opportunity to learn, grow and develop through this project? If I can answer yes, we did our job. And if I answered yes, that means that there will undoubtedly be some kids who will seize that opportunity and carry what they learned into making a better life for themselves.
They will have saved themselves. To me, that is the ultimate success story.
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