Soft White Underbelly Billy Hale

Introduction & Description of Artifact

With over 1000 interviews on YouTube, Soft White Underbelly is an intense and intimate look into America's destitute class — Most interviewees are living on the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles, but Laita has interviewed people in Appalachia among other places. Experiences of childhood abuse, absent parents, and drug abuse are overwhelmingly common in SWU interviews. Interviewees vary in enthusiasm when telling their story, but many seem to enjoy the experience of simply talking about their lives.

My project aims to understand how Mark's docu-series "Soft White Underbelly" influences audience perspective. In other words, what is it about SWU interviews that leave an impact on viewers, and what exactly changes for the audience after watching?

Analysis Process

I have been aware of SWU for a few years now, so I was no stranger to the content when choosing the series as my text. Nonetheless, I watched and re-watched dozens of SWU interviews and recorded common patterns and descriptions that would appear over and over. I found the diversity of interviewees really interesting because individuals from rural West Virginia to Downtown Los Angeles — people that were in everyway different from one another — often shared only one defining characteristic in common: poverty.

Applying Brummett's continuum of Broad v. Narrow meaning to my text helped me develop my argument. On the Broad side of the continuum, most people would come to the conclusion that America has a homeless problem, or that many Americans are abusing drugs — that much is obvious from SWU interviews. However, when paying closer attention to the stories of SWU interviewees, it becomes clear that certain experiences such as child abuse, drug addiction, absent parent(s), lack of education, dissolution of community bonding/recreation, and general wealth inequality all universally trigger the poverty that further enables these unfortunate experiences all over again. Internalizing this viscous cycle of poverty and its consequences leans toward the narrow side of Brummett's continuum, but those in the SWU audience who come away with more awareness of this phenomenon are fulfilling Mark's goals with the series.

In these two interviews we hear from two entirely different individuals who have lived in fundamentally different regions of the US, but intergenerational drug addiction in their families has ultimately led both to a similar financial situation.

Findings

Mark's interviewing strategy is incredibly consistent, beginning almost every interview with the question, "Where are you from? Where did you grow up?" followed up with "what was your childhood like?" Due to the consistent format of SWU videos, the audience inevitably recognizes common responses. Within the first 30 seconds of any random SWU interview, a story along the lines of the following will almost always be revealed:

"...I did experience watching my mother get abused by different boyfriends, and verbal abuse as well on the children, myself and the siblings, there's seven of us," said Monique.

"...as soon as I dipped into the drug world [at 17], I lost everything," said Kyle.

"...I grew up with my mother, my father left when I was about four, bullshit," said Eden Gold.

"...my biological father, he's a piece of shit, he used to beat the shit out of me," said Ben.

If the content is so depressing, one may wonder why SWU maintains 3.2 million subscribers, hundreds of thousands of plays, and thousands of comments each video. But I think the persistent viewership of SWU demonstrates a growing number of people who are now more empathetic towards, and understanding of these unfortunate people.

These interviews are candid and unfiltered. I believe it is this raw style of documentary that engages the audience in a genuine and personal fashion. The audience is led to consider why they can, or can't relate to these interviewees — the viewer will consider what factors are often repeated in these interviews, and they will grapple with the unimaginable stories, experiences, and circumstances that have come to define America's destitute class.

The physical presentation of some of these individuals is also a persuasive element that works rhetorically on the audience. The unclean state of interviewee's like Angel clearly illustrates her lifestyle while most of us watching SWU are relaxing at home in our clean clothes. However, it is not just the unwashed hair and old shirts that pierce through the audience, but the depressed and tired faces of some of these fellow Americans.