Twitter may have given Struggle Street a reprieve, but two Mount Druitt community leaders were left hurt, angry and feeling sick when the credits rolled.
Director of education at Mount Druitt College Sharon Kerr, and head teacher of plumbing Norman Brown, switched on the much-maligned SBS show after watching more than 450 young people graduate from the TAFE on Wednesday afternoon.
"It just makes me feel ill," Mr Brown said of the observational documentary that centred on a Mount Druitt family struggling with drug dependence, violence, mental illness and a broken welfare system.
"We work so hard to make sure our students are motivated in a positive way, and this show just undermines all the good work we do," Mr Brown said.
"Our students, our potential students, they'll see [the show] targeting them and I don't want them to have a sense of hopelessness," he said.
Ms Kerr was fiercely protective of her community, echoing the sentiment expressed by many Mount Druitt residents since the documentary's provocative promo aired: that SBS had tarred all of western Sydney with the same bristling brush.
"The whole community has been tainted," Ms Kerr said.
"Western Sydney is a rich and diverse community that spans a diverse social spectrum … But [Struggle Street] just reinforces that continually portrayed negative view of Mount Druitt ," she said.
Ms Kerr did not begrudge the documentary's focus on disadvantage in Australia, just that it lumped it on her community.
"People do need to see that, Australia-wide, there are people who urgently require help," she said.
For critics who slammed Struggle Street as voyeuristic and "poverty porn" for the middle class, Twitter was where their prediction would prove justified or unwarranted.
The cheap shots were as crass as they were infrequent:
#strugglestreet Mt Druitt a good reason for compulsory sterilisation.— Noosa (@madeinnoosa) May 6, 2015
Struggle Street only served to entrench western Sydney stereotypes for some:
Centrelink provides a disposable income to avail you of: giant Slurpees, ice, dog food, chocolate milk, ciggies..... #strugglestreet— Great Aussie Bloke (@Gr8AussieBloke) May 6, 2015
Others seemed to back the sentiments of Mount Druitt mayor Stephen Bali and his cavalcade of garbage trucks that hauled their way to SBS's Artarmon offices in protest on Wednesday morning.
#StruggleStreet is disgusting and so far from a complete truth. @SBS— Blayke Tatafu (@BlaykeTatafu) May 6, 2015
She's pregnant. Holding a knife. To get into a room. To smoke a bong. You can't tell me they aren't making a choice here. #StruggleStreet— AJ (@ajo_melb) May 6, 2015
But the biggest gripe Twitter had with the documentary was the blokey voice-over:
This could really do without the stupid narration. Let the stories and the people speak for themselves #strugglestreet— Trisha Jha (@themetresgained) May 6, 2015
And the subtitles:
The offensive part of #StruggleStreet is the use of subtitles for people who are perfectly understandable. English is English.— Ser Danos of Bowles (@thecartodiv) May 6, 2015
A handful pointed out the hypocrisy of news organisations' coverage of the controversy in the lead-up to the program airing:
News programs like to favor their stories that pick on western Syd but SBS can't do this coverage without being the bad guy? #StruggleStreet— Dylan Marsh (@avishadur) May 6, 2015
And the PR boon the negative press had proved for SBS:
I see what you did there, @SBS. Stirring up publicity with trashy promos for #StruggleStreet but actually delivering an insightful doco— Bridget Gillespie (@bridgetgllsp)
May 6, 2015
But overwhelmingly Twitter seemed to buck the expected outcome of outrage by giving the documentary its blessing:
So far #strugglestreet just seems to represent a community desperately in need #MtDruitt— Sami Clare (@Sami_Clare) May 6, 2015
So far I'm seeing a bunch of kind, warm people who've all been dealt a really shitty run. #StruggleStreet— Emma Watt (@EmBrianne) May 6, 2015
Hey #StruggleStreet is a really worthwhile show, turns out the promo just did it a disservice. Or perhaps a service given the publicity?— Lisa Pryor (@pryorlisa) May 6, 2015
Far more troubling than 'poverty porn' is a film and TV industry that shies from depicting people who live on the fringes #StruggleStreet— Luke Buckmaster (@lukebuckmaster) May 6, 2015
And some just split the difference:
Two things I have a problem with in regards to #StruggleStreet: the ability to afford smokes, and the absurd spelling of names— Brendan Johnson (@the_red_heifer) May 6, 2015
The series was going to run for three weeks, but will now conclude next Wednesday in a two-hour program.
