The Begging Game

Dana, 14, stands on the NYC streets every afternoon begging for money to help fund her mother's dialysis treatment. Theresa, 74, lives in a group of thrown-together boxes each night (Korean boxes are preferred over American boxes, because of their superior construction). However, as this Frontline documentary profiling the lives of people who make their livings from the begging game unfolds, we find out that Dana is 17, not 14, and her mother's need for dialysis is questionable; and Theresa is probably closer to 64 than 74, and less than truthful about other matters. When the program is not playing let's-follow-the-homeless-person (which it does a bit too much...at the expense of real investigative work into the social, economic, and cultural conditions which create the phenomenon), The Begging Game does manage to provoke a few synapse firings, especially when it raises the issue of what separates the marginally talented singing family in the subway with the open guitar case filled with change (legal) from the panhandler who stands with a cup of change in hand and a placard around his or her neck (illegal). Recommended. (R. Pitman)