The Spectacle of Disposability: Bumfights, Commodity Abjection, and the Politics of Homelessness

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The Spectacle of Disposability:Bumfights, Commodity Abjection, andthe Politics of HomelessnessKyle S. Bunds, Joshua I. Newman & Michael D. GiardinaPublished online: 03 Sep 2014.

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The Spectacle of Disposability: Bumfights,Commodity Abjection, and the Politics ofHomelessnessKyle S. Bunds, Joshua I. Newman & Michael D. Giardina

This article offers a critical analysis of the mediation and commercialization of “bumfighting” (videotaping two or more poverty stricken individuals engaged in low-dollarbloodsport). In recent years, the production of pugilism has emerged in the US as popular—and indeed highly lucrative—features of the media-sport landscape. This paper looksinto what we can learn from these 1) deeply corporeal mediations and 2) radicallypolitical public pedagogies. Regarding the corporeal dimension, we deconstruct the waysin which bodies—and particularly bodies of the street—are framed within these populardiscursive formations. We also explore the ways in which these media representationsvalorize, and are articulated within, broader political mediations on the underprivilegedand “living welfarism”—which largely portray individuals living with homelessness associal welfare “parasites,” drug addicts, or nuisances to a nation’s economic growth. Weconsider how these popular media constructs locate certain bodies as abject and therebydisposable. We conclude by discussing what these public pedagogies tell us not only aboutpublic space but most importantly about bodies that inhabit them.

Keywords: Politics of Homelessness; Bumfights; Sport Spectacle; Disposability

In 2012, the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) released a study on theprevalence of physical abuse enacted upon homeless individuals—commonly referredto as bum bashing—in the US. It found that there had been 312 deaths of homelesspeople as a result of hate crimes against the homeless in the past decade.

Kyle S. Bunds is Assistant Professor. Correspondence to: Kyle S. Bunds, Department of Parks, Recreation, andTourism Management, College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 8004,3028G Biltmore Hall, Raleigh, NC 27695 8004, USA; Email: [email protected]; Joshua I. Newman isAssociate Professor of Media, Politics, and Cultural Studies in Sports Management, Faculty Member at FloridaState University, Tallahassee, FL, USA; Email: [email protected]; Michael D. Giardina is Associate Professor ofSports Managaement, Faculty Member at Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA; Email: [email protected]

Critical Studies in Media Communication2014, pp. 1–15

ISSN 1529-5036 (print)/ISSN 1479-5809 (online) © 2014 National Communication Associationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2014.944928

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Additionally, the coalition provided the painstaking details for every one of the 24deaths in 2010. Yet, as the Coalition is quick to point out, this figure represents onlythose incidents that were reported; it is more difficult to know the actual numberof homeless people who are killed (because many homeless people do nothave immediate family members or friends to report them missing). Incidences ofviolence enacted upon unsuspecting homeless individuals have remained steady sincethe NCH started tracking anti-homeless hate crimes in 1999 (Knafo, 2012a) and morerecently these acts of violence have been exploited for their commercial potential.

Specifically, there has been an introduction into the popular vernacular of anInternet-based phenomenon referred to as “bum fighting,” or the commercialexploitation of bum bashing for capital or entrepreneurial gain. Created by RyanMcPherson and his friends, the film series Bum Fights depicts homeless peopleengaging in various acts of self-deprecation in exchange for money. Some activitiesshown in the videos include: homeless people fighting one another; drinking urine;and sleeping homeless individuals being attacked by a man calling himself the “BumHunter”. In a special report on the popular news program 60 Minutes, Ed Bradley(2006) presented the videos and their commercial success thus:

Bumfights is a series of popular DVDs in which homeless people performdegrading stunts for which they are paid a few dollars and a lot of alcohol. Theyalso include clips of teenagers fighting. The DVDs cost about $20 and have sold300,000 copies over the last five years.

Attempting to problematize the commercial exploitation of homeless indivi-duals, Bradley was quick to point out that the bum fighting phenomenon has facedconsiderable public scrutiny due to the “sport” being implicated in the deaths ofmultiple homeless people. For instance, in a 2005 incident in Holly Hill, Florida,Jeffrey Spurgeon, a teenager who was sentenced to life in prison for killing a homelessman, stated that he and his accomplices “watched the … films hundreds of times”(National Coalition for the Homeless, p. 45). Despite the fact that the DVDs werepulled from store shelves in 2006 (Knafo, 2012b), the coalition noted that the actionsof Spurgeon are not anomalous as the number of bum bashing videos uploaded andwatched on YouTube has steadily increased. The aforementioned NCH report for2012 noted that, as of 2010, 11,300 videos portraying homeless violence could befound on YouTube, and that viewership continues to rise. Although the commercialexploits are correctly met with calls for action by media personalities (e.g. Bradley,2006; Knafo, 2012a, 2012b; Star-Ledger Editorial Board, 2011) and pulled from theshelves of popular stores, the cult surrounding the internet phenomenon hascontinued to proliferate (Knafo, 2012b).

For us, this phenomenon leads to more critical considerations of the roles media,public policy, and the social production of public space play in advancing theconjunctural politics these forms of symbolic and physical violence instantiate withinthe public sphere. More specifically, while we acknowledge that homelessness has longbeen a problem in society, here we are concerned with how these unique conjunctures

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work with—and possibly against—praxes of increased national privatization, a turn awayfrom social welfarism, and the emergent cultural politics of neoliberalism—a marketfundamentalism or belief in which “all social and economic problems can always andonly be solved through a free market economy (i.e., deregulation of business and trade, arestriction if not abolishment of state intervention, etc.),” and which reorients theindividual “away from the social welfare and well-being of the state and toward a purefree market in which the individual is (in theory) free to pursue his or her own ends withminimal state intervention” (Giardina & Denzin, 2013, p. 445). In this paper, then, webegin by providing context to the franchising of homelessness through these commer-cially viable exploits. Second, we situate the Bum Fights videos within the larger politicaleconomic apparatuses of the historical present. And, third, we point to specific publicpedagogies layered onto the Bum Fights videos and what this portends for the homelessbody as an object to be controlled. In so doing, we attempt to formulate an argumentaround how, and more importantly why, these bodies are made to bleed, turned againstone another and into entertainment on the street.

Franchising Homelessness

We do not believe it is funny or cool to antagonize homeless people. The purposeof this video is to promote awareness, through satire, of the ever increasing globalepidemics of poverty, violence, addiction, and lack of education. Help those whoare less fortunate. Spread love not hate. (Opening Credits Bum Fights 3: The FelonyFootage)

The four-volume Bum Fights franchise began in 2001 when producer RyanMcPherson and his friends made the first video, entitled Bum Fights: A Cause forConcern. The video features what appear as random fights on the streets betweenseemingly willing combatants, and introduces a character known as the “BumHunter,” who wakes up sleeping homeless people and terrorizes them by, forexample, duct taping their body parts together. This first film prominently featurestwo homeless individuals living in San Diego, California, that would become the facesof the franchise: Rufus Hannah and Donnie Brennan. These two homeless menserved as the primary “actors” who fought one another and performed various otheracts for money. When McPherson retells the making of the film, he makes the casethat he was “simply having fun with his friends”:

I met them when I was 15. I was the only person to treat them like human beings.My friends and I spent every Christmas and Thanksgiving with them and wetreated them like brothers. I actually spent more money on Rufus one year than Idid my entire family. These were two men who gave me a huge lesson in life andhard times. They were pretty happy for being homeless and felt that they were freeand able to do what they wanted. This I respected. It gave me a new way of viewingthe homeless. Rufus felt that the ‘real bums’ were those with credit cards. Thepeople rushing to and from work, slaving away just to retire and be too old to goout and do anything fun. This philosophy, from a local bum, I carry with mealways. (quoted in Freeman, 2006)

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“Rufus the Stunt Bum” is also introduced to the audience at the beginning of the firstvideo, where he can be seen holding his hands out in front of his face to show the word“BumFight” spelled out on his knuckles. Soon after, we see three minutes of Rufusperforming “stunts,” such as running his head into crates, walls, and storage units;being thrown downstairs in a shopping cart; punching drive-thru menus; and jumpinginto trash bins, which caused noticeable bleeding to various extremities—injuries thatRufus claims in his 2010 book, A Bum Deal: An Unlikely Journey From Hopeless toHumanitarian, still hampered him a decade later (Hannah & Soper 2010). Rufus wasalso taunted into fighting his friend, Donnie. In the film, Donnie is not only coaxedinto becoming Rufus’s sparring partner but also becomes the punch line of manyactions conducted by McPherson and his friends. For example, the film crew would getDonnie inebriated and then trick him into drinking a 40-ounce bottle of beer that theyhad recently urinated in. They even were able to talk Donnie into getting “BumFight”tattooed on his forehead. And, on another occasion, while Donnie was intoxicated, theyset his hair on fire. For McPherson and friends, this “friendship” with Donnie andRufus was not only entertaining; it became a commercially viable enterprise.

By 2010, this first Bum Fights video had reached a staggering 7.2 million hits onYouTube (National Coalition for the Homeless, 2012). Within the free market logic,the “bum fighting” brand—promoted through the Bum Fights DVD series,merchandising such as the “Rufus the Stunt Bum” sweatshirt, and pay-per-viewtelevision events—has become extremely profitable as evidenced by the fact that6.8 million videos had been sold as of 2009 (Moriarty, 2009). However, afterbecoming commercially successful, the original Bum Fights video and subsequentvideos in the series produced by Indecline were questioned by detractors, such asBradley (2006) and Knafo (2012a, 2012b), who criticized McPherson for takingadvantage of those who could not help themselves. In general, the arguments againstseries feature a discussion about the “Bum Hunter.”

The Bum Hunter first appears roughly 15 minutes into the first video. Thischaracter acts as though he is noted crocodile hunter Steve Irwin but instead ofattempting to conquer crocodiles he goes after homeless people. The Bum Huntersegment shows “Steve Urban” sneaking up on homeless individuals, duct taping theirlimbs to make them immobile, hitting or kicking them, then leaving them thereunable to move; or he would put them into the back of a white van and drop themoff at another location, kicking and hitting them as he threw them out of the car. Asexplained in a disclaimer at the beginning of the Bum Hunter segment, “Very fewbums were harmed in the making of Bum Hunter. All were released back into theirnatural habitat.” This tactic shows up again in the second and third videoinstallments as viewers witness a group of men driving around and tying uphomeless individuals on the street. Similar to the Bum Hunter, these men wouldeither leave the homeless men their tied up and immobile, or they would take theindividuals to another location.

Most famously, Bradley (2006) questioned McPherson on 60 Minutes about the“Bum Hunter” segments. McPherson defended the Bum Hunter, saying that the

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videos are nothing more than a skit, which resulted in Bradley retorting, “Skit?You’re sneaking up on them while they’re asleep and assaulting them. It doesn’t looklike a skit. It doesn’t say, ‘Hey, this is staged. This is acting.’” McPherson was forcedto agree that he could not defend the Bum Hunter, stating, “I mean it’s just soabsurd. I mean this guy’s rolling around in the dirt with homeless people and we’retrying to defend the notion that we’re responsible for the deaths of homeless people”(Bradley, 2006); the interview ended on that note.

For his part, shortly after the immediate success of the first video, McPherson soldthe video series production company Indecline to two investors. Although he went onto partner with Indecline for two more videos, Indecline: Vol. 1 “It’s Worse Than YouThink” (2005) and Bling Bling: Bling-A-Long (2006), McPherson agreed to stopprofiting off of the abuse of homeless people as part of a court plea bargain (seeBradley, 2006). The new producer of the series, Ty Beeson, went on to make threemore videos under the Bum Fights moniker and famously sparred with Dr. PhilMcGraw on McGraw’s popular daytime television show, wherein Beeson explainedthat the homeless people wanted to be filmed and people wanted to watch:

Customers like violence, they want to see homeless people doing crazy things,something this world needs. For example, this one guy, a crackhead had some teeththat were bothering him so we got him some pliers and pulled them out and he justwanted a bottle of JD [Jack Daniels]…We don’t just sit there and give them ourpocket change and say good luck, we put them to work…I’ve made multiplemillions off these videos. It’s a sick world.

McPherson, Beeson, and those associated with the Bum Fights videos take a verymarket-oriented approach to interacting with the homeless and bring it to theviewing audience. McPherson’s argument is that he is simply showing what“naturally” occurs in the “violent homeless culture”; Beeson agrees that it is goodfor both consumer and homeless. Unsurprisingly, both men are condemned for theircommercial practices by lawmakers and journalists alike. However, there is alegislative battle currently taking place that disciplines, punishes, and criminalizesthe act of homelessness, of being homeless. Additionally, as numerous public policyinitiatives have drastically cut funding for public housing, and a concomitantemphasis has been placed by private, free-market solutions to social problems, thecommercial viability of Bum Fights becomes less contradictory. This is apparentwhen considering statements made by an officer in an investigative documentary onthe Bum Fights video series.

In the investigative documentary of the Bum Fights video series, Bum Fights: AVideo Too Far, narrator David Phelan takes the viewer through the “horrible”transgressions present in the exploitation of the poor for financial gain and fame. Hedoes so by interviewing people who are attempting to help the homeless. Yet, those inthe video who are opposed to the act of bum fighting and actively agitate for thesocial wellbeing of those who are homeless also reflect a underlying philosophy ofindividual accountability. For example, the film crew rides along with and interviewsa police officer in the film. This police officer is presented as being a caring individual

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who legitimately wants the best for the homeless people. He claims to have knownRufus for a long time and one clip in the film shows him having a rather cordialexchange with Rufus, similar to one that a friend would have with another life-longfriend. Yet, as he was traveling to see Rufus, his statements were similar to Beeson’sand McPherson’s. When discussing how terrible McPherson and his colleagues werein exploiting Rufus, the officer stated:

They’d get ‘em drunk and then just offer them more booze and that’s pretty muchall it took. When you’re living the life that these homeless people are doing, wherethey’re drunk all the time, that’s the only think they’ll care about. I mean they’ll doanything for another drink.

Although our aim is not to indict the officer individually, because the officer issimply answering a question and in fact trying to help them, to the officer’s point, theproblem is individual vice, not systemic error; that is, an individual working outsideof the corporate logics familiar to those living in a free market society today mustsomehow be brought within the confines of capital production. For the producers ofthe Bum Fights video series, making the homeless into an economically viablecommercial entity (individual) normalizes the condition of homelessness andengenders a blame-the-homeless-for-their-condition mentality.

Embodying Neoliberal Abjection

Polanyi (2001) stated:

It was in relation to the problem of poverty that people began to explore themeaning of life in a complex society. The introduction of political economy intothe realm of the universal happened under two opposite perspectives, that ofprogress and perfectibility on the one hand, determinism and damnation on theother. (p. 89)

Historically, the key for those studying poverty and influential policy makers hasbeen to figure out what to do with the less fortunate in society. While homelessnesshas long been studied by political economists (e.g. Smith, Ricardo, Polanyi,Friedman, Hayek, etc.) and has been viewed as a problem in society by policymakers, Soss, Fording, and Schram (2011) noted that, over the past 40 years there hasbeen a shift in policy and action. The authors suggest that, “as the state is privatized,so too are the social problems of citizenry” (p. 22). For Soss et al. this has led to anemphasis on the individual and a disciplinary institution of paternalism. Soss andcolleagues emphasized that “paternalism is an authority relationship based onunequal status and power” following the “general logic of paternalism … [the belief isthat] the poor lack the competence needed to manage their own affairs” (pp. 24–25).

The commercial success of the Bum Fights video series has coincided with the riseof a systemic ideology that turns away from social welfare programs intended to helpthe poor and disadvantaged into one that turns toward a form of individualization

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within the social realm. In these videos, the homeless body is at once nothing—to bedisposed of and viewed as a worthless leech on society—and not nothing—a verycommercial entity able to be capitalized upon. It is a body assumed to be sitting idlyoutside the circuits of capital and thus adding no valor to the market. As explainedby Baum and Burnes (1993), within such framings “homelessness means beingdisconnected from all of the support systems that usually provide help in times ofcrisis; it means being without structure; it means being alone” (p. 153). But how didwe get to the social divisions that are so evident today? Although there have longbeen people cast away from society (Baum & Burnes, 1993), the division begins withthe ability to be employed versus unemployed in the free market—one who workson behalf of capital accumulation and one who fails to work within the confines ofthe market system. If one fails to work within the market, he or she fails to fulfill hisor her role as the actor working in his or her best interest—homo economicus.

… fundamentally different subject, structured by different motivations andgoverned by different principles, than homo juridicus, or the legal subject of thestate. Neoliberalism constitutes a new mode of ‘governmentality,’ a manner, or amentality, in which people are governed and govern themselves. The operativeterms of this governmentality are no longer rights and laws but interest, investmentand competition… As a form of governmentality, neoliberalism would seemparadoxically to govern without governing; that is, in order to function its subjectsmust have a great deal of freedom to act—to choose between competing strategies.(Read, 2009, p. 29)

In other words, the charge of homo economicus becomes to strive for one’s ownbest interest in the marketplace through rigorous competition—a Hayekian utopia ofsorts. One becomes the ideal by participating in investments and working towardcreating capital (Read, 2009). And, individuals are free to act on those bodies that donot comply with free market logic.

As Giroux (2012) explained, within the popular imaginary of the contemporaryUS, those who fail to live up to the standard of self-interested individualism are castas burdens to the State and, as such, are deemed “disposable.” Following theunwavering promise of competition through market rationality to its logical endresults in the normalization of winners and losers; winners who contribute aneconomic benefit to society, and losers who, by dint of their failure, are pejorativeburdens on the State. Homelessness, then, is the naturalized result of such a systemicorder. And thus, Hayek would argue, since all human beings have an equal chance atsuccess in the free market, those who are homeless are homeless of their ownvolition, their own failure of citizenship in a free market society. To cast them as lazy,treat them as bums, and render them invisible is the inevitable outcome of such apolitical economic orientation. However, bearing witness to the homeless engaging inentrepreneurial acts (if we can call bum bashing such a thing) and consuming such aspectacle becomes equally as naturalized within such a moment.

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From Invisible Bodies to Spectacle Pedagogies

Advances in our current media culture allow individuals to confront or beentertained by the violent culture of homelessness from a distance—the virtualpublic space. This distance has turned the viewer into an active consumer of poverty.Much like first-person shooter video games that allow us to “experience” the horrorsof war in the safety of our living rooms, we can virtually consume poverty withoutever having to engage in the material realities of poverty itself. Hall (1997) categorizesthis dynamic as being a part of the centrality of culture, or “the way in which culturecreeps into every nook and crevice of contemporary social life, creating aproliferation of secondary environments, mediating everything” (Hall, 1997,p. 215). Mediating the human condition of homelessness makes it possible for thoseseparate from direct interaction with poverty to be able to disengage and disassociatewith the poor. Arnold (2004) explained that such expansive access to images ofpoverty in fact exacerbates the perception of the bum as worthless “other.” As hestated:

This radical separation between self and other can be explained by the idea thatidentity in a modern nation state such as the United States is inextricably linked toboth nationalistic and economic concerns. One’s labor and participation in themarket constitute the primary contribution to society while being housed hasbecome a clear symbol of economic independence and socially important labor.While nationalism often forms the basis of emotive content for many modernnation-states, those countries that also define themselves through the market havea different sort of self-understanding that is no less emotional. (pp. 87–88)

Within this public pedagogy of poverty, the personification of the “other” restswithin the imaged poor living the “bad” life—one constructed around the homelessperson as “undeserving, pathological, and irresponsible” (Arnold, 2004, p. 89). Thereiterative discursivity of homelessness—witnessed in countless films, televisionshows, news accounts, and, in this case, Bum Fights videos—helps to construct andmaintain this image (as well as keep the rest of society comfortably distanced).

Martin Gilens (1999) illustrated the media’s role in proliferating a hatred forwelfare. Gilens found that American citizens were hostile towards the idea ofexpanding social welfare. Further, US citizens theoretically support the idea ofhelping others, but in practice believed that one can only truly help themselves.Gilens surmises that this connects with a given society’s turn toward individualism.Utilizing Steven Luke’s explanation that individualism refers to “equal individualrights, limited government, laissez-faire, natural justice and equal opportunity, andindividual freedom” (p. 32), Gilens suggested that individualism as a social structuremaintains that the ideal citizen makes something of himself, by himself, asking littlefrom society, and giving back little.

Guthman (2009) similarly argued that the individualization of society is a productof “neoliberal governmentality … characterized by efforts to shift caring responsib-ilities from public spheres (welfare) to personal spheres (self-help)” (p. 1115). As henoted, this way of thinking is the inverse of the welfare state. Instead of the State

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looking to help the individual, society now views the roles of the individual as simplynot being a draw on social resources. This leads to the hatred toward the individualthat is perceived as being undeserving of receiving help (Gilens, 1999), resulting inthe homeless as visibly invisible victims (Huey, 2012).

What is at stake here is the understanding of who owns the body and who ownsthe space which those bodies occupy. Cooper (2008) explains that answering for whoowns the body is contested. He suggests that we are currently in a state of bio-financialization. Specifically, the body is being commodified in such ways as todirectly make it the source of financial gain, here in the form of mediated violencesold for profit. While this is a more direct relationship between the body andcommodification, it remains similar to Baudrillard’s (1994) discussion of advertisingat work in the consumer society wherein the body is sold as a commodity toadvertisers seeking to profit from the utilization of that body. Objectification andcommodification through a disengaged hyperreal media allows for the humancondition to no longer seem fully human at all; thus it is easy to believe that one canbe owned, told what to do, and made to deliver entertainment.

This dehumanization of homeless people is exceedingly important to understandin light of the profits accumulated on the back of violence against the homeless body.In the free market logic of competition, as Read (2009), Harvey (2007), Giroux(2012), and others point out, everything is represented in the market as acompetition and everything is viewed as a commodity. The homeless body ascommodity becomes evident in the investigative documentary on the Bum Fightsvideo series, Bum Fights: A Video Too Far. In the opening minutes of the video, oneof the first people that Phelan speaks to stated, “You see the people profiteering offthe most vulnerable segment in society.” McPherson and others are making moneyoff of doing horrible things to people, an accusation to which they concede. But,when taken in conjunction with the spread of free market ideology throughout thebody politic of the US, the idea of profiteering off of the most vulnerable segmentsand subjects in society is how corporations are able to make their money, and itseems quite reconcilable with the narrative of American ingenuity and hard work. Itis the same logic that allows for the Wal-Marts of the world to be both castigated bycritics for their malignant labor practices and championed by low- and middle-income consumers for providing affordable goods—a circumstance that is itselfpredicated on the former types of practices.

At its core, the bodily articulations of the division between public and privatespace—or the erasure of public space—that McPherson and his fellow filmmakersaccentuate through violence are embodiments of the struggle for urban space and ourplace in it. Economic philosophers such as Hayek (2007) or Friedman (2002) wouldinsist that freedom has to do with the freedom to own private property. Conversely,Amster (2008) suggests that freedom has to do with the ability to congregate inpublic space: “Public space, then, as the sole site of guaranteed access in the city,stands materially and metaphorically as the essence of pluralism, political participa-tion, and personal freedom” (p. 45). These public spaces are spaces for representationand are important in a sustainable democracy. Inherent in these acts of political

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participation, personal freedom, and representation is contestation. As Kohn (2004)noted, “public space is a natural stage and a powerful medium of communication,especially for, those who cannot command significant private space, including theoutcasts, the proletariat, the underclass … public spaces are the last domains wherethe opportunity to communicate is not something bought and sold” (p. 70, as cited inAmster, 2008, p. 44, emphasis added).

Lefebvre (1996) carefully articulated, and Soss and colleagues (2011) confirm, thatonly certain people have the opportunity to influence the decisions of urbanstructure—what he calls corporate organization: “The corporate system regulates thedistribution of actions and activities over urban space (streets and neighbourhoods)and urban time (timetables and festivities)” (p. 68). Yet while urban spaces do indeedafford opportunities for freedom, such freedom lies within the hands of those whoorganize the city. The cultural and economic geography of most cities today areorganized by the changing conditions of life in the US and the way it is experiencedby people every day. Or, put differently, cities are organized by direct relationshipsbetween people and relationships between institutions (Lefebvre, 1996). Decisionsmade by those with the ability to make them always benefit some while limitingothers—Mouffe’s (2000) democratic paradox. And, if we are to understand theparadox at hand, we must come to recognize that institutions born from class andproperty relations will influence the state, which gives power to the market society(Polanyi, 2001). In the current landscape of politics toward organizing public andprivate space, the institutions of the state work to serve the market and what servesthe market best is the economically driven man—homo economicus. Therefore, urbanspace is developed to benefit the market, not its citizens, resulting in the potential fordisposability (or at the very least segregation). Lofland (1973) long ago argued thateven such benign spaces as urban parks are politically impractical spaces: “Thedistribution of affluence made possible by industrialization, the development of awelfare state to care for the remaining indigent, and the efforts of the humanitarian,labor, and reform movements during the nineteenth centuries were undoubtedlymajor factors in its (the urban park’s) demise” (p. 72). As the contemporary cityorients more towards economic development in a global economy, it fractures alongvery acute lines of demarcation. “It tends to form ghettos or parking lots, those ofworkers, intellectuals, students (the campus), foreigners, and so forth, not forgettingthe ghetto of leisure or creativity … In planning, the term zoning already impliesseparation, segregation, isolation in planned ghettos” (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 144,emphasis added). (Perhaps the clearest example to be found is Detroit, Michigan,whose urban core has been decimated by years of privatization and deregulation, butwhose attendant suburbs remain resplendent bastions of capital accumulation.) Inpractical terms, the bum, then, can be and often is segregated from the rest of society,castoff as abject easily, until knowingly confronted by audiences as an anomalyof civilization and a body to be punished for its insurrections against economicdevelopment.

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Conclusion

How we come to understand this relationship between public and private space isexceedingly important as it directly impacts who participates in “democracy” andmagnifies the challenges of living on the streets. Cities such as Atlanta, New York,and Chicago “all have used arrest sweeps, issuing tickets for begging, physical removalfrom the city, and detention for ‘quality of life’ violations” (Arnold, 2004, p. 109). InDetroit, “The American Civil Liberties Union said police are forcing individuals whoappear homeless into police vehicles, transporting them out of town and droppingthem off miles away, sometimes outside city limits” (Sands, 2013). Some citiesthroughout the nation are pushing legislation that will make it illegal to be homelessand are even promoting bills that will ban donations to shelters (Al Jazeera, 2012).San Francisco engages in street “scrub downs” by taking high pressured hoses andcleaning the streets, particularly, of sleeping homeless people. Other instances haveshown the harsh treatment toward the homeless including burning possessions,criminalizing begging, or removal of property owned by the homeless and leftunattended on the street (Holland, 2013). In defense of a ban against the homelessleaving shopping carts unattended, Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanichargued the materials left unattended by the homeless, “posed a public health hazardby making it impossible for the city to clean public streets and sidewalks on skid row,which has the highest concentration of homeless people in the city” (Holland, 2013).

The above incidences are consistent with the general decline in “America’s fundingcommitment to providing housing assistance for new low-income housing” in theReagan and post-Reagan years (Coates, 1990, p. 130). Solutions have been proposedin this move away from public funding and into the sphere of private not-for-profitcharity. Yet Baum and Burnes (1993) noted that citizens experience “compassionfatigue” and the general sentiments toward the homeless indicate that people believethe “homeless are undeserving and (America) is becoming less generous and morecareful about its support” (p. 108). These recent measures share a commonality withthe bum bashing and Bum Hunter videos showing that “housing the poor is not a hotissue, but teaching them a lesson is” (Arnold, 2004, p. 96).

While, for the most part, laws are being put in place that further hurt the homelessand criminalize their very existence, some states are attempting to help the homelessnoting that it actually saves the state money. In Rhode Island, the State SupremeCourt recently passed a bill of rights for the homeless that assures them of the abilityto receive food that is provided by individuals who do not have to pay high licensingfees to the state. Further, the homeless are provided with the same rights to publicspace as all other citizens (Al Jazeera, 2012). However, those opposed to the bill, suchas Republican Representative Dan Gordon, are continuing to fight against thehomeless. Gordon suggested: “We need to bring jobs here. We need create throughlegislation a more friendly business environment through deregulation, less taxation,and then things will take their natural course” (Al Jazeera, 2012). In the same report,Jim Ryczek explains that the Rhode Island Bill of Rights for the homeless will not beproblematic for business or taxpayers at all. Instead, he suggests that studies

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conducted by the state of Rhode Island have found quite the opposite would occur ifthe homeless are taken care of. Ryczek noted that providing shelter for the homelesswould save $8,000 per family because people with places to stay are less likely to havediseases resulting in extended stays at the hospital which would be paid for bytaxpayers and local tax-paying businesses. Unfortunately, the case of Rhode Island ismore exception than rule and renders the Bum Fights videos aligned with Americanlegislation.

The irony of the discourse from those opposed to the Bum Fights films indicatesthe homeless person should stop being exploited. But, why does the conversationstop at ridding the world of these videos? What are we really upset about here? Whoare we upset at? Through the acts of violence on the homeless body, the Bum Hunterand his contemporaries act as metonyms for the ideologies of homo economicus, notas anomalies. Through Bum Fights videos, spectators are privy to a glimpse into asimulated reality of homelessness. These very real, very bloody bodies aredisseminated with the background of loud music and overtures suggesting that thisis what the homeless people want to do. Evidently, parts of our society, such asMcPherson, believe that homeless people want to be made into a spectacle—and thatthe homeless already live in a society of violence (Huey, 2012)—so why not profit offof this misfortune.

Yet, bum bashing and bum fighting tell more than just the story of how somepeople have utilized human need for sustenance to convince homeless people to fight.Bum bashing also provides a glimpse into the mindset of the treatment of the humanbody that plagues our country. It is the stories of individualism as the way to getone’s self out of problems that endure and make change problematic (Gilens, 1999).Unfortunately, Huey (2012) found that there is little security provided for thehomeless by law enforcement; in fact, she found that law enforcement was moreconcerned with security from the homeless. As a country, we have developed a strongdislike for helping those we view as undeserving (Baum & Burnes, 1993). We oftenhear some tell stories of conquering homeless people just because they do not deserveto be on the same streets occupied by those who are seen as contributing to society.Such was the blog from a student at the University of Toledo (2004) who, afterdiscussing how he started a fight with a “bum,” said:

I had a brilliant idea next. I rolled his bike over to the parking lot where I wasparked. I then backed up over the bike, went back about twenty feet, floored it anddestroyed his bike. We all started laughing hysterically. The one bum then peekedaround the corner and I yelled to him, “You know what? You were a biking bum,but your ass is a walking bum, now!” I then threw the remains of his bike towardthe road.

Numerous scholars have provided solutions for moving away from the currentpath of punishing and criminalizing homelessness and privatizing all space (e.g.Amster, 2008; Baum & Burnes, 1993; Coates, 1990; Huey, 2012). For example,Amster (2008) recommended taking a local approach to resisting the global effects offree-market capitalism that play a role in creating large-scale homelessness. Amster

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himself set out to organize a resistance movement that found some success in theTempe, Arizona region. He utilized local college students and fought anti-homelesslegislation. Amster concluded that it is possible to resist if you take a very localizedapproach to a global problem. Coates (1990) meanwhile, endorsed measures similarto the Homeless Bill of Rights in Rhode Island by suggesting that providing housingand medical care would actually bring down the cost of caring for the homelessstating, “medical attention at an early stage would not only prevent the consumptionof scarce and costly inpatient resources necessary to treat disease in advanced stages,but would also tend to prevent the spread of diseases both among the homeless andthroughout the larger community” (p. 264). As we venture to come up with solutionsto homelessness, it is important to recognize that often times the discourse ofindividual failure and the continued sanctification of the market acts to always placethe homeless as other (Arnold, 2004). Until the homeless body is viewed as a worthybody, homelessness and the violence enacted on the homeless will not be fixed.

Through this analysis, we hoped to uncover some of the ways that the mediatedspectacle of the disposable body becomes manifest through the act of bum fightingand why the commercialization of this bodily act occurs within the historical present.It is in this dystopia that the current status of individualism and lack of community issituated. McPherson and those like him have engaged in truly deplorable actions. Yet,systematically, lawmakers, law enforcement officials, and individual citizens havedeveloped a society that sets out to discipline and punish those who live outside ofthe market (Arnold, 2004). Through legislation, corporeal violence, and mediaconsumption of the homeless body depicted as undeserving, the slow realization thatsome bodies are valuable while others are not is naturalized and rarely considered tobe problematic. In this project we hope to make people aware of not only the actionsof the people who engage in this type of activity, but also problematize the systemicmeasures implicated in the production and dissemination of the commercially viabledisposable body on and of the street. This is not a Ryan McPherson problem; it ismuch more than that.

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