It’s not unusual to see celebrities shed tears over global injustices — Annie Lennox did so just last week during American Idol’s annual anti-poverty telethon. Still, it’s weird watching Red Hot Chili Peppers’ resident goofball Flea welling up over a sick baby in rural Haiti. But this episode of MTV’s star-studded doc series 4REAL isn’t really about Flea — he’s just viewer bait.
“We live in a society that, for whatever reason, has put celebrities at the top of the pyramid,” says Sol Guy, 4REAL’s Vancouver-based co-creator. His goal is to “bridge entertainment and activism” by bringing celebs to hardscrabble spots across the globe to meet local leaders.
“[Celebrity] can have a huge impact but you have to be careful with it because it’s a fine line,” says Guy. “It can help and it can also hinder. We’ve been sensitive to that and tried to learn the best way to harness [their spotlight] and reflect it back to these leaders.”
Years in the making, 4REAL is the brainchild of Guy (formerly manager to Toronto rapper k-os) and partner Josh Thome, who got pal Joaquin Phoenix to sign on as executive producer and bring in friends like Flea.
“It’s not like I’m that famous in the first place,” demurs Flea, months after he travelled with Guy to meet a rural health worker in the Western hemisphere’s poorest country. “But in the course of me going, if it brings awareness to one person who does something to try and help Haiti or get a deeper understanding that where they live isn’t the centre of the universe, then that’s a good thing.”
In other episodes, Phoenix meets an Amazonian tribal chief, Mos Def travels to Rio’s infamous City of God favela to see an activist-rapper and K’naan hits the Kenyan slums to meet a local who runs a youth soccer program for thousands. This week, M.I.A. returns to Liberia — the country that inspired her song “20 Dollar” — to meet a child-rights worker. She visits a school with a stolen roof, paints a playground and throws a badass block party where everyone gets down to her “World Town.”
“What was most interesting to me was that they were doing pieces on these cultures that were positive,” explains Flea. “Haiti is really going through a hard time but the show was not about ‘Hey, look at these poor people, look at the devastation, look at the malnutrition and all the problems they have.’ That’s all anyone ever hears. This is about the boldness of the human spirit when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. It’s about how beautiful people can be in these situations. It was one of the most touching experiences of my entire life.”
Not everyone is so impressed. One 4REAL shoot took place a few blocks from Guy’s office when actress Eva Mendes visited Vancouver’s heroin-ravaged Downtown Eastside to witness the efforts of Liz Evans, who compares her Portland Hotel Society to a refugee camp in a war zone. But another local activist decried 4REAL as “poverty porn” to The Globe and Mail.
“It’s a sensitive place down there and people have every right to voice their opinion. But we work really closely with the people we feature and the last thing we want to do in these places is to sensationalize it or take advantage of these people,” says Guy, noting the show shares profits with featured organizations and includes them in the editorial process.
“Criticism is gonna pop up, but I think we did our best to understand that complex neighbourhood and the work that Liz is doing,” Guy says. “I learned as much there as I did anywhere around the world.”
4REAL AIRS MONDAYS, 8PM ON MTV CANADA.
Six degrees of devastation
With Earth Day upon us, the National Geographic Channel is rolling out Al Gore–approved programming.
Filmed across five continents and narrated by Alec Baldwin, the epic Six Degrees Could Change the World demonstrates — degree-by-deadly-degree — the scorching heat waves, catastrophic floods, rainforest fires, super-storms, animal extinctions and refugee crises that will wrack the planet as the mercury rises.
Wonder who’s to blame? Earth Report: State of the Planet examines which nations helped and/or hindered the war on global warming during 2007. China, for instance, surpassed America in total emissions but also invested $8 billion in a “Green Wall of China” reforestation project.
During a Planet Mechanics marathon, two British inventors devise eco-solutions like making a Venetian water taxi solar-powered or taking a youth hostel off the electrical grid, while Gone to Save the Planet is an investigative series focusing on wildlife conservation. The 10-episode marathon begins with poachers in Cambodia who prove as dangerous as landmines.
Then again, you may just wanna spend Earth Day outside — while you still can.
SIX DEGREES COULD CHANGE THE WORLD AIRS APRIL 22, 9PM; EARTH REPORT AIRS APRIL 22, 8PM; PLANET MECHANICS AIRS APRIL 21, NOON-6PM; GONE TO SAVE THE PLANET AIRS APRIL 22, NOON-5PM. ALL PROGRAMS are ON THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL.