Poverty porn trick in Cici’s Ngidinge

When poverty is employed as a motif in art it can also become poverty porn, especially if the story doesn’t have anything to do with teaching us anything new. Cici’s music video for ‘Ngidinge’ is tantamount to poverty porn … it churns sympathy.

Ambitiouz Entertainment is known for making socio-political commentary in its music videos, save for videos such as KLY’s ‘Patience’. The label has done it again with ‘Ngidinge’ (Look for Me), where we see a street woman walking with a doll as her companion to the grave of her dead child.

The video gives a strong message about the reality of poverty, and a symbolic take on the real-world Cici. The first idea projected, seen in the opening when male vagrants attempt to steal from Cici’s character, is that people will take from you even if you have nothing. She manages to fight them off – all they could have possibly taken are newspapers and the baby doll that she protects vehemently.

The doll is a sentimental object that she carries throughout the video. She straddles it on her back with a blanket and even tries to feed it. The viewer gets the sense that Cici has lost everything, including her mind, but not her humanity. Everywhere she goes, she's treated like trash. At one point she stops in front of a department store's window to look at a pre-adolescent mannequin. She breaks into tears and the store's security guard comes out to chase her away.

It is only at the end of the video that the audience learns that she has lost a child. The revelation sheds light on her behaviour. She must have gone into psychotic depression and shut out the world due to mind-breaking grief. In one scene she walks past what is presumably a family member or close friend. She ignores the person as if she never seen her before.

The video is obviously based on Cici's real life. Last year she was told that she may never have children after her pelvic girdle was injured during an assault by her former lover and kwaito artist, Arthur Mafokate. But the symbolism is fractured by the song's lyrics in which Cici asks her lover for forgiveness. The connection between vagrancy, child loss and calling back a lost lover (you've seen the flyers) are totally incoherent. Another half-baked video from Ambitiouz Entertainment, which is on a mission to use elements of pity to get those YouTube views.

This is not an attempt to disqualify the seriousness of poverty, mental health and the traumas associated with losings one's child. It's just that audiences should think twice before they are overwhelmed by emotion-stirring videos that use poverty porn as a selling point. It's a trick!

Artist: Cici
Video: Ngidinge
Label, Year: Ambtiouz Entertainment