I recently co-wrote 'Reviewing the World' with Martin Scott and Charlotte Jenner. The report is an evaluation of the CBA WorldView project viewed in the context of current international coverage. My chapter of the report uses a Frames and Values approach to analyse a selection of WorldView supported films. The full report can be downloaded from here.

Below is an excerpt 'Framing Development'. This section analyses the film 'The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanisthan':

The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanistan is a feature length documentary that charts the transition from childhood to adulthood of an Afghan boy named Mir. In the UK it was screened under the title The Boy from Bamiyan on Channel 4 in November 2011. The perspectives of Mir and his family provide the vehicle through which the filmmaker Phil Grabsky documents changes in Afghan life between 2001 and 2010 after the retreat of the Taliban marked the end of thirty-years of civil war. We argue that the film successfully activates ‘universalism’ values of equality and social justice in three ways. Firstly, the film explores universal themes, which audiences can relate to, such as family relationships and growing up. Secondly, the story is told, almost exclusively, through Afghan eyes. As such, it offers a change from the plethora of programmes about Afghanistan that focus on the experiences of western occupying forces. Thirdly, the film challenges conventional surface frames for development relating to poverty, aid and charity, as the film’s Afghan protagonists are depicted as the heroes of their own story.

Universal themes
The Boy Mir: TenYears in Afghanistan triggers ‘universalism’ values through exploration of common human experiences such as family relationships and growing up. It touches on the ‘Empathy’ surface frame that hinges on underlying values of ‘commonality and compassion’. The narrative revolves around intimate glimpses of day-to-day life and focuses on the ups and downs of family relationships. These are made easy for the audience to relate to regardless of geographic location. For example, against a backdrop of poverty and destruction, we see Mir’s father Abdul laughing fondly at his son’s misbehaviour. Like children the world over, Mir is told off by his mum for not studying hard enough. We hear him despair ‘Oh no mum is angry again!’ And we witness Mir’s parents bickering as financial strain weighs heavily upon both of them.

Similarly, the theme of ‘growing up’ taps into another universal human experience. As a little boy Mir plays, laughs and fights with his friends. As he grows he assumes adult responsibilities; ploughing the arid land and working in a coal mine for meagre wages. ‘I am now a man’ he says more than once. As a teenager Mir wants to be liked and is influenced by both the media and peer pressure. He sees a motorbike on television and decides to save up for one. He spends all the credit on his brother’s mobile phone and wants to ‘call girls in Kabul’.  Although he lives in extraordinary circumstances, in many ways Mir’s transition from child to teenager tells a universal story.

By focussing on our common humanity the filmmaker highlights the injustice of the grinding poverty Mir’s family experiences. As Grabsky points out in an interview with television producer David Cox (2011), ‘they are just like you and I and the fact that people just like you and I are eating grass in this day and age is shocking’.

Afghanistan through Afghan eyes
The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanistan documents change in post 2001 Afghanistan as seen through the eyes of a poor, rural Afghan family. According to film critic Jules Brenner (2011) it offers a unique perspective of the country’s culture, seldom seen in the UK media. Often western media coverage of Afghanistan is synonymous with war, violence, religious extremism and foreign intervention. However The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanistan shifts discourse from the macro to the micro level, from an outsider to an insider viewpoint. As life in Mir’s family’s village is relatively disconnected from Taliban activity the film becomes a ‘study of generalized human experience’ in which the day-to-day details of family life become ‘a unique way for an Afghan family of little opportunity to share their triumphs and sufferings with the larger world’ (Brenner 2011).

As blogger Kelsey Atherton (2011) puts it, Mir’s narrative, as experienced through his eyes, does not adhere to ‘the grand arc of struggle between the interloping Americans and the indomitable Afghan people’. Wider events are touched upon but they seem almost as far removed from Mir’s reality as they are from most of the audience’s. For example, audio of western news reports is played over scenes of day-to-day life in Mir’s community, such as a local football game. The disparity between the juxtaposed war reportage voiceover and scenes of slow-moving rural life seems incongruous. At points in the film we literally experience wider events through the eyes and ears of Mir and his family, as they listen to the news on the radio or watch developments on television. In these instances both the viewer and Mir experience countrywide developments through the prism of the media, rather than first hand. Indeed we only witness an actual military presence in Mir’s community twice: at the start of the film when a helicopter casts a shadow on a hillside as it flies overhead, and in the tenth year of filming when Mir meets ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) soldiers for the first time.

Mir’s encounter with international forces is narrated from his perspective. Although the soldiers arrive armed and in big trucks, Mir observes their shared humanity, ‘They came out with their big guns and I was scared but I noticed they were scared too’. This comment is telling because it reverses the conventional victim framework. Rather than ‘developed countries’ rescuing ‘victims’ of underdevelopment, here we witness a young Afghan boy expressing compassion for foreign soldiers who he senses share his fear.

The positioning of the audience in the Afghan protagonist’s shoes activates the ‘Empathy’ frame whereby care for the poor is based on feelings of togetherness and compassion. This approach demonstrates one way in which ‘universalism’ values can be activated and audiences might be encouraged engage on a deeper level with the lives of those in developing countries.

Challenging conventional frames for development
The Boy Mir: TenYears in Afghanistan touches on development issues such as poverty, the plight of refugees and gender inequalities. The long-term perspective of the film and the intimate portraits of the key characters serve to ‘personalise development concepts’ and ‘give each a name and a story’ (Camp 2011). The way in which these issues are portrayed challenges the surface framing traditionally associated with international development. This section will discuss the ‘Poverty’ and ‘Charity’ surface frames to illustrate this point.

To firstly consider the ‘Poverty’ frame, which views the issue of concern as ‘poverty often to the exclusion of interrelated issues’. Poverty is indeed a constant theme in the film. Mir’s family are forced to eat cow tripe that the butcher has thrown away in order to survive. At the start of the film, as refugees, they live in a cave. When they move back to their village they work in a dangerous coalmine, as this is their only means of earning a living. However, poverty is not viewed as removed from wider issues. Throughout the film education is framed as holding the key to liberation from hardship. Mir experiences a constant tug between work, for the short-term survival of his family and school as a means of improving his long-term prospects. His father Abdul has mixed emotions on the subject: ‘When you have food then you can go to school’. But his brother Khushdel who laments his own illiteracy is constant in encouraging Mir to further his education: ‘I’ve told you a thousand times, this is all about your future, not mine. I am illiterate. I did not go to school. That's why I’ve ended up digging coal in a mountain which could collapse at any minute.’

The ‘Charity’ frame positions development NGOs as conduits through which money is donated to the poor. The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanistan however, challenges conventional notions of charity. When aid is delivered to villagers who scramble for clothes being handed out, Mir’s mother refuses to take the clothing and chastises her neighbours; ‘shame on you for behaving like beggars!’ Mir’s family hope to be given one of a hundred houses being built by an NGO for Bamiyan cave dwellers but they aren’t allocated one and in this instance fall through the net of charity. Towards the end of the film Mir scoffs at the ineffectiveness of notebooks given out by soldiers visiting his village, pointing out that he could afford to buy them himself. In short Mir’s family do not fit the ‘victim’ framework often associated with the portrayal of poor people in development communications. They are the heroes of their own story. Their humour and resilience shines throughout the film as exemplified in the scene in which Khushdel dances with his friends as they work in a coalmine (‘it might be a mine but we still need to entertain ourselves’). Mir’s hopeful comment ‘I want to carry on with my studies and become a headmaster or president’ sums up his optimism in spite of the difficulties he faces.

In summary, the dominant surface frames throughout the film are the‘Empathy’ and ‘Social Justice’ rather than the more disempowering ‘Poverty’ or‘Charity’ frames. In terms of deep frames the film’s focus on intimate portraits of people ‘who are just like you or I’ evokes the ‘Non-Hierarchical Structures’ frame with its emphasis on equality. The‘Participatory Democracy’ frame is also evident in the sense that the survival of Mir’s family comes across as being the result of their hard work, cooperation and ingenuity. In essence the film activates ‘universalism’ values by focussing on the commonalities of human experience, viewed from an Afghan perspective, and by avoiding the ‘victim’ framework often observed in communications relating to international development.