Both “Postcards from the Edge” and “Streetwise” reveal a crimson look into what it is like for young boys and girls to live on the street. Both use images to emphasize their points, and both are disturbing to see. While “Streetwise” is a documentary about homeless teenagers in Seattle, “Postcards from the Edge” is an essay written about homeless wanderers all across the country. Because of this, there are some key differences between the two. In “Streetwise,” a man with a camera follows these kids around, filming what they do, how they act, and so forth. The documentary seems to be focused on the kids individually rather than the whole social class that they represent. In “Postcards from the Edge,” however, the author is making points about the social class and using individuals’ quotes and stories as a way to prove their point.
Another way that the two seem to differ is the fact that in “Streetwise,” you see how these kids live. In “Postcards,” you were just given a glimpse of the person whether that is a photo or a quote. In “Streetwise,” your following these kids, they’re taking you around to where they get food, how they scrounge up some money, and even how they go home and see their parents. Now that is something that is completely different between the two. In “Postcards,” the reader interprets that these kids were casted out by their parents or just run away from it all. In “Streetwise” you are shown that some of these kids are brought home with their parents, that they live at home sometimes and are even still given their weekly allowances. You get a completely different feeling for these kids and their situation from seeing this. Instead of thinking about how these poor kids need to find somewhere to stay and get a fresh start, you now think, why are they doing this? Why are they throwing their lives away when they have a bed back home? Then you start thinking about how someone gets to be doing this, so the whole attitude of homeless teens changes by just seeing this alone. This is manly how these two works differ, while one gives you a feeling of pity and remorse, the other just gives you a feeling of uncertainty about how this could happen.
I don’t think that one piece is more effectively portraying homeless teens than the other; I just think that the viewpoints are different. “Postcards” seems to have the view of people from another social class looking down upon these homeless kids, and “Streetwise” seems to have the view of these homeless kids looking at each other. I think that both works were just trying to show the social class in the way that they could, and I believe that both were effective.
I think that the “Streetwise” photo essay gave a much different perspective than the documentary did. It just shows you the power of photographs. In all of the photos, the kids look tired, dirty, depressed, with a look of yearning a way to get out of their situation. In the documentary, however, you see these kids joking around with one another, smiling, playing. Every perception of a situation can be altered based on the vantage point that you see it in.
