Honestly, I’m perplexed by the range of reactions that Slumdog has elicited. I liked the movie, had a great time while I was watching it, adored the sound track and cinematography and thought the plot and acting were clichéd. But a week later, I would have forgotten the film if not for all the other hoopla surrounding it.
The core of the controversy seems to be whether the film is exploitative. Who gets exploited (slumdwellers, old India, new India) changes depending on who is levelling the accusation, but each time the claim is that the movie is somehow poverty pr0n.
The main broadside against the film was lobbed by Amitabh who said:
“if SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.” [link]
He later backpedaled, saying that the words were not his own, and that he had put them up merely to start a debate.
Similar criticism came from former ambassador (and Sree‘s dad) T P Sreenivasan, who saw the movie as undermining new India:
Having read the novel and seen the film, I cannot say that it has done more good than harm to India. This is not a matter of my wanting to shove the reality under the carpet… the film is exploitation of the novel, of Dharavi, of poverty, of Rahman, of India itself to titillate foreign audiences. It is the exploitation of the new curiosity about India’s success.Torture is internationally banned and the director of the film knew that India had not joined the global consensus against torture….The torture scenes do not add much to the story, but denigrates India even more than the slums do… As though the depiction of squalor, crime and cruelty is not enough, the film challenges India’s success. [link]
And an anonymous friend of mine summed up his discomfort with the film by saying:
Anything having to do with the third world that masses of white people go into paroxysms over is guilty until proven innocent…
On the other side are writers like Nirpal Dhaliwal in London, who parry Big B’s thrusts arguing that his discomfort with the movie is revealing:
Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India’s “murky underbelly” as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world’s poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema. [link]
David Bordwell, whose extensive review is one of the best I’ve seen and who is actually fairly critical of the movie, responds to Bachchan by pointing out that the first world has also had to deal with depictions of its own poverty in film (and therefore that this is not a First vs. Third World issue):
Indian criticisms of the image of poverty in Slumdog remind me of reactions to Italian Neorealism from authorities concerned about Italy’s image abroad. The government undersecretary Giulio Andreotti claimed that films by Rossellini, De Sica, and others were “washing Italy’s dirty linen in public.”…Liberal American films of the Cold War period were sometimes castigated by members of Congress for playing into the hands of Soviet propagandists. It seems that there will always be people who consider films portraying social injustice to be too negative and failing to see the bright side of things, a side that can always be found if you look hard enough. [link]
It is bizarre to me that both detractors and supporters of the movie agree that the movie is realistic and disagree about whether this realism is shameful or productive. Sure, SDM was a “more realistic” portrayal of India than your average Bolly flick, but that’s like saying that it was a more realistic portrayal of India than Johnny Quest. To me, the film itself remained fantastical, escapist and Dickensian, more Oliver Twist than clever plot twist. I just can’t be bothered to get my chuddies in a knot over it. Show me a realistic portrayal of India, and then we’ll rumble.
Related: Sajaforum’s roundup, everything on Slumdog on UB, and of course, everything we’ve blogged on the topic
When are we going to demand an apology from the british to what they did to india
“And then it hit me: Wow. Finally, a day has dawned in which a Tamilian is (OK, two South Indians are) potentially bigger in India than that Bachchan trinity trash. Sweet.”
i agree! although trash is too dismissive (mrs. jaya and mr. amitabh bachchan have some good works to their credit; and i liked abhishek bachchan;s intensity in ‘yuva’) but nonetheless, i am glad that people from humble backgrounds who produced a technically sound piece of art got the recognition they deserved after putting in a lot of good work over the years. now, that is a pretty good story in triumph of the human spirit motif, innit?
I don’t understand when did calling people names become OK?
“Degenerate like potmanteau is posting… time to leave this thread.”
you won’t be missed 🙂 bye!
Documentary films are not dead yet in India. Adoor Gopalakrishnan is fully into documentaries these days. He is determined to make good documentaries about the traditional art forms of India. Many of his new films are funded by ordinary French individuals who are not rich people. They raise funds in France from ordinary people. We Indians fund, only if it is spicy.
It is possible to like this film for some good reasons, and to dislike it for really wrong reasons (like because it portrays poverty and squalor). Even with many good features to the film, I did not like it because it was deliberately colonial and denied Indians in the film (other than Jamal and Latika) normal human emotions. I say deliberately because the novel Q&A does not suffer from any of the criticisms of the film I have made at
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=667039&view=public
Portmanteau, thank you for the restrained & thoughtful comments. You have expressed much of what I feel.
Jyotsana, regarding your comment: “The same criticism is valid considering how Hollywood treats Indian non-mainstream cinema. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Kumar Shahani, or Aravindan have never come up for notice. Maybe because unlike Boyle they explore other issues that are supposed to be the domain of Western cultural vandals.” The lack of respect (or whatever) for directors other than Ray in US/Europe might have a lot to do with the realities of distribution & film preservation. Thanks to Ray’s early Cannes & Venice success, there was (& is) a lot of interest in his movies & fortunately his quality (imho) didn’t dip for most of his moviemaking life. So his movies got art house releases & later video distribution through Sony & BFI. BFI has also released some Ghatak movies. There is also a Brit DVD release of Addor’s Elippathayam. But other than that I have never found a decent video of any of the movies from the golden age of Indian art or parallel cinema. I refer to the post-Ray generation of the 70s & 80s, when many great regional movies were being made addressing, in a more sombre & thoughtful way, some of the issues SDM does. In fact, when I travel to Calcutta (my hometown) I can still pick up almost any Mrinal Sen, Ghatak & Ray movie at the local video store, but never any of the other arthouse directors. I suspect that is the same in any other Indian city. How many of us have seen some of these movies outside of Doordarshan in the good old days or some film festival in the distant past? Ergo, no video + no screenings = no Occidental love. There isn’t a big conspiracy going on suppressing good movies.
Off topic, I went to see the Apu Trilogy last week at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, CA. I was struck by the very few Indians (or Indian-looking/ Indian-origin persons, I guess) in the audience. I had also noticed this a few years back when they had a Ray festival. These are state of the art, beautifully preserved prints – the best way you can see a Ray film today. Very sad to see these ignored (my anecdotal evidence, of course) by the huge Indian community in the Bay Area.
Kamalahasan gets no respecct? Boo hoo! Quality inema gets no respect? Kamal has the media eating out of his hand, applauding his every hammed up effort – because apart from comedy the guy simply doesn’t act. His greates contribution to Indian cinema (apart from some of the brilliant comedies he has starred in or produced) is the non-acting all-hamming clone Shahrukh Khan, who is the only person who can use his by now trademarked guffaw even in a tragic scene! Kamal’s Nayakan ran to packed houses in India while the West gave it the cold shoulder, talk about respect!
Rahman was famous first in India before he became famous overseas. But Ilayaraja? I haven’e seen a single post here on his Tiruvachakam in Symphony – a rendering of Manikkavachakar’s Tiruvachakam in oratario with a full classical orchestra. Ilayaraja and Fr. Jegat Gasper Raj borrowed money from loan sharks to record this work of art. Without taking anything away from ARR (who never tires of praising Ilayaraja) TIS is one Indian work of music that got much less than it deserved.
Movie making is hard in India, because when a movie fails – which is more often than not – it doesn’t mean giving up the million $ home and the Ferrari. It means starvation and being out on the streets. Vadivelu the roadside panhandler turned movie millionaire now takes care of Rajkiran (aka Abdul Hamid) his mentor and one time actor/director, outside whose gates he used to panhandle at one time. Rajkiran’s fall was faster than Vadivelu’s rise. The stakes in the movie business are v. high. And the ones who are respected are those who have helped their crew and their distributors. Raj Kapoor lost his shirt making Mera Naam Joker, so he acted for free in a ridiculous role as “Do Jasoos” to pay back his debts, and then went on to make Bobby, using which he cleaned up all his dues, not making much for himself in the process. Rajinikanth made Valli to give an opportunity to every actor and technician with whom he had shared the footpath, beedis, and rice gruel during his days as a acting student, but had gone ahead to make his fortune. After Rajinikanth’s Arunachalam bombed he made Padayappa to help the financiers recoup their losses and acted for free. We are talking of a very different world, with some good people but little else.
Port @ 55:
In my books, JB is above the Hole-y Trinity formed by the ABs (now 3 in number, after the wedding of the century).
To me at least, AB, Sr’s intense works of art are lost in the smoke of his string of (paid) endorsements, public insecurities, and uncritical self-importance. I like people who go away after they display whatever it is they are supposed to be good at.
Like Rahman actually sprinting off the stage after the brief second acceptance speech, like a stag uncomfortable with the
limelightglaring headlights… That must have been a first too, in the history of the Oscars.49 · Malathi said
hmm… i’m finally seeing why tamasha snapped y’day but nonono… i’m vaguely uncomfortable about that comment. i admit i cheered with the wins by rahman, sampooran and resul, i share a cultural background with none of them and yet all of the above. hmm… maybe becos we dont need to pull someone down to feel tall, no? heck, even Rahman quoted from Deewar in his speech. I dont know abotu the kids but the old man deserves a load of respect for his body of work.
Even if I didnt think the movie deserved that many Oscars, I still liked it and thought Boyle and his Indian codirector did a fabulous job with the material. I am not a big Bollywood music fan, so I will lay off the music criticism in this.
A lot of the Indians who seem offended are the DBDs. They probably are the same people who tell nonIndians that caste is a thing of the past and other nonsense. They are always quick to defend India’s honor but do very little to actually help India’s honor by making it tougher for such films to have credibility. The big economic IT boom in India was a big help to many Indians. But those who struck it rich with the land values going up have done very little to help out India’s poor. Their average politician makes Blagovech and Cheney seem normal when it comes to corruption or making money off of one’s position. My parents are from Andhra Pradesh and I notice how many politicians over there seem to want more and more for themselves. Nothing is enough for them. It is not enough to take a little money off of projects and then concentrate on helping the poor with the other money that comes into the government.
One of the more common criticisms I have heard from older Indians is the depiction of the kid diving into the pile of excrement to meet Amitabh Bachan. It was pretty gross, but then I remembered that during one of my trips to India I saw “sewer guy” dive into a septic tank to unclog some blockage. I shit you not. I felt so freaking bad for the guy. I was just a little kid then. Why is it not a bigger priority among the upper class to provide necessary outfits for such actions? They are quick to demand westernized stuff in facets of life that affect them.
I know Sivaji got a mixed reaction. But what Rajnikanth has to go through to get projects rolling is not that far off from reality.
Before indians get all defensive, they need to check what reality is like in India. The only unrealistic thing I found was the harrassment of the guy by the cops. With India’s press, it would be tough to get away with that stuff.
Pravin, I disagree with your generalizations about DBDs.
Also the police harrassment is pretty accurate and from what I know.
squish the ‘pongy pesticle, pronto! please.
Everyone here, including the blogger himself, seems to have forgotten that this is a South-Asian American (or if you ask Vinod, Indian American) blog.
So instead of speaking about how this movie affects Indians adversely or how desis will be viewed, one should be contemplating how this movie affects (non Indian) Americans adversely.
Americans need to understand that people in many places in the world are catching up to them in terms of education and intellectual capital. I am not just talking about math scores or scientific acumen: The very American trait of enterprise and risk taking is slowing being up-ended by Asians and Indians in their respective countries.
From that perspective, it is pretty irresponsible to “Zimbabwize” India by showcasing movies like SDM. A whole generation of American youngsters will grow up with the false notion that India is not a country to be taken seriously – and yet wonder why jobs are going to a country where people crawl in excrement. As it is, Americans have become blindsided by this whole outsourcing thing. Once India picks up in global media, small-car manufacturing and other areas, America will be hit pretty hard, and as an indian-american I prefer that Americans be prepared for this.
As it is, this coming depression will guarantee that a whole generation of Americans will have to get used to a standard of living that is considerably below what their parents enjoyed. To top it, should they be fed irrelevant crap about other countries who are vying to eat their lunch (having already eaten their breakfast)? If anything, they need to be educated better about what large segments of Indians(~400 million) are up to – which is preparing for a standard of living that existed before the British set foot.
M. Nam
From that perspective, it is pretty irresponsible to “Zimbabwize” India by showcasing movies like SDM. A whole generation of American youngsters will grow up with the false notion that India is not a country to be taken seriously
So it the responsibility of an English producer who makes a movie in India about India to be concerned about whether that movie will suitably prep the American children about competition from India?
Americans need to understand that people in many places in the world are catching up to them in terms of education and intellectual capital. I am not just talking about math scores or scientific acumen: The very American trait of enterprise and risk taking is slowing being up-ended by Asians and Indians in their respective countries.
I get similar emails from my dad about hysterical articles from the Times of India about how by 2025, India will get ahead of the US.
Btw, I have to say that Moornam is the original prophet of doom. He has been making dire predictions longer than Nouriel Roubini and most of Moornam’s dire predictions about the US economy have actually turned out to be true. I remeber chuckling at Moornam’s posts about the coming collapse of the US economy in 2007.
“Without taking anything away from ARR (who never tires of praising Ilayaraja) TIS is one Indian work of music that got much less than it deserved.”
i agree with you on this. ilayaraja failed to benefit from the post-liberalization hype that younger musicians like rehman received. and in delhi, i’ve seen several documentary film-makers struggle with several jobs or venture into corporate films to see their works realized. but this is also true of young (and heck, old) ramen eating (and sometimes couch-surfing) film-makers that i’ve observed in NYC. any kind of artists, really. only the very lucky musicians, writers, poets, actors, and movie makers get to pursue their vocation full time (and this is a historically persistent trend. one needed a patron to produce a sustained corpus). even when that happens, near-destitution is one movie, album, self-published book, or magazine issue away. it is really breathtaking to behold an unlikely project that materializes (sometimes, even irrespective of its merit). kari (amruta patil); sita sings the blues; or any of the documentaries i mentioned earlier, come to mind.
“when I travel to Calcutta (my hometown) I can still pick up almost any Mrinal Sen, Ghatak & Ray movie at the local video store, but never any of the other arthouse directors.” thanks tipu. actually, recently a calcutta born friend of mine bought for me several DVDs by mrinal, sen, and ghatak — all of them packaged beautifully, with subtitles, and readily available. for the first time, i believe a collection of FTII student films was also released on DVD last year(which included vidhu vinod chopra’s first acclaimed student film among others). and i think/hope that these examples of loving preservation will multiply in the coming years.
KashytheCableMan:
I just wish to be like you: To think I that am witty and pretty and smart.
KashytheCableMan:
Can you please describe to me how I delude myself into thinking I am smart and good looking. I have been trying to fool others like you, but I am not able to. What am I doing wrong? Should I tell others I like wine, when in fact I actually prefer arracks.
I read the best review of SM in counterpunch.
Poverty, Violence and Greed Slumdog Reality?
By CHARLES R. LARSON
http://counterpunch.org/larson02202009.html
sarcastician & KashytheCableMan – stop the squabbling please. I’m at work and the intern is busy today. Neither of us has a lot of time to moderate this thread so please …
pafd:>>So it the responsibility of an English producer..?
No – it’s the responsibility of the Oscar committee. I don’t begrudge the other seven awards that the movie won – they are for individual achievement, technical or otherwise. However, while deciding the best movie, the committee members ought to(if they are already not) consider the effect of the movie on the American populace and decide whether it does justice to the whole truth. Only a movie that takes the whole context into account should win – in that respect, this movie failed. After all, art is supposed to make us more informed – not blindsided.
A whole lot of us Libertarians are worried that the US is looking exactly like the Roman empire just before its fall. An overextended army, a political class disconnected from the founding principles, a weak economy, a highly sexualised youth and a majority addicted to entitlements. There were Roman versions of the stimulus packages back then too. And most of all, unable to attract more soldiers from its jaded, disinterested populace, Romans asked able bodied men from across other countries to join its army if they wanted a fast path to get a “Roman seal” – not unlike what this current regime is doing. Within no time, the barbarians were knocking on Rome’s gate.
I’m sure, just before its fall, there were plays in Rome where Gauls had to crawl on excrement to get an apple. Probably the play won a lot of awards as well!
M. Nam
Please DO NOT respond to comments by KashytheCableMan. Thanks.
Shoot me. In broad daylight. Because, in the dark, I will have an advantage over you, dough boy.
Khoof:
I am sorry you are seeing this as a South vs. North comment. Yes, I can see how this could be taken that way (but I am not apologizing for the Tamil pride aspect either; it is similar to what you felt when you saw Kapoor, a fellow Punjabi, on TV).
Let me reassure you, that this sense of glee is purely personal. In my books, I see it as India vs. the three tall Bachchans; talent vs. mostly hype; ordinary folks vs. nepotistic Gods. How tall is Rahman? 5′.1, 5′.2? And he didn’t even have to pull down that Bachchan tree–yet he stood tall for at least a day. Can ordinary mortals like me savour that moment before we go back to our books and papers?
Yes, I thought so. Thank you.
Quoting from the review from counterpunch.
“I remeber chuckling at Moornam’s posts about the coming collapse of the US economy in 2007.”
yaar, even a stopped clock is right two times a day 😉
Moornam,
I personally think it is very important for American youngsters as you say to get a well rounded perspective of the rest of the world, not just India. That being said what are the specific things you take issue with in SM, I think what is shown wrt life in Slums, the people begging on street lights and police brutality is pretty accurate.
75 · Ponniyin Selvan said
That’s exactly what I thought, and wrote about in my ramblings about this uber-phenomenon. The academy routinely celebrates and awards movies that seem to represent the worst of human behavior here and everywhere else. Perhaps SM got swept into all the international film festivals because of the third world montages, but it triumphed here in the US only because it has a schmaltzy, happy, totally improbable ending. The people over here weren’t rejoicing in seeing yet another negative representation of a third world country, they were rejoicing that Jamal went through all that and got the girl at the end. Yet another cynical ending where Jamal dies and Latika continues in servitude would not have got the popular response it did over here.
umberdesi, yeah, it was a generalization. As far as police torture, I believe it happens but I dont know if it would happen to “that guy”. Isnt this show huge in India? Dont they have a press that is pretty vigilant? I dont see why they would risk that with such a high profile game show contestant. The guy could have easily squealed to the press and made a big controversy.
I didn’t know that. That makes the torture scenes in Slumdog Millionaire just as credible as the poverty scenes. And just as damning of India.
That is in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms. In nominal exchange rates 80% of indians live on less than 50 cents a day! Making India home to the world’s largest concentration of the hungriest and most abjectly poor people.
Umberdesi:>>I think what is shown wrt life in Slums, the people begging on street lights and police brutality is pretty accurate
I’ve lived in a slum in Mumbai. I, probably more than anyone else on this board, know that the depiction is accurate.
But it’s not accuracy that I have a beef with – it’s the context. The relevancy to the American public.
How does it matter to an American that there’s police brutality in India? Or that there are communal riots? How does it affect the life of Joe the Plumber?
But the fact that Tata is making a $2499/- car for possible export is very relevant to John Doe. The fact that Infosys opened up another center in Bhubaneshwar should give John Doe sleepless nights. Or the fact that India is launching satellites in space for less than 1/10th the cost of NASA should drive American scientists to drink.
If you look back in history, America has made the same mistake over and over again. Even though anti-Semitism was on the rise in Germany throughout the 1930’s, not one Hollywood movie addressed it, even though it affected them. Even though Japan was quietly reinventing itself in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Hollywood was making movies like ToraToraTora. They completely missed the boat on China’s rise because they just saw KunguFu movies and movies like the Last Emporer.
Ultimately, the American public lost. Manufacturing is almost as dead as blushing. What we have is an economy where people give haircuts to each other.
SDM misleads and blindsides Americans because it focuses on irrelevant aspects.
M. Nam
Pravin,
In terms of torture, I am not sure if it happens to a specific person and even though press is independent, I don’t think most cases make it the papers. I will tell you of an instance where my brother was taken to Andheri Station for something he didn’t do and what we saw there being done to people makes what is shown in Slumdog pale. There is an inherent fear of police which most people will not risk, so may be the premise of it happening to game show contestant may be far fetched but the kind of torture is not.
58 · jyotsana said
Most everything is hard in India. Yet you are one of the “India Shining” Hindutva cheerleaders who keeps defending and making excuses for this barbaric, degrading reality. Why?
Why should Danny Boyle be held to a higher standard than any other filmmaker. Yes Tata is making a car and yes there are other noteworthy things happening in India, but he is allowed to make a film on a subject he deems fit.
84 · umber desi said
Or even more importantly, the Indian politicians – whom I will not name here – that some of these offended ones ardently support, for that matter?
81 · MoorNam said
Why did it matter to americans that the American South relied heavily on slave labor; or that South Africa practiced racial apartheid against desis and africans? Similarly, americans must object to the cruel and unjust barbarisms that are rampant in India today. How can americans trade in good conscience with a nation like India that relies so heavily on the labor (often slave labor) of undernourished, uneducated little children?
Money and free markets seem to trump morality in your book. We can see where that ideology has landed the world today.
ennis – thanks for your response to my comment on the other thread. I meant to post on this thread. Big difference between Oliver Twist and SDM. dickens was an englishman who wrote for fellow countrymen while SDM is not. Satyajit Ray could be compared to Dickens. I think the appropriate response from offended indians would be do a movie on black ghetto america and call “Monkeytown”. Let us see how well that goes down. Parents will call their children monkeys but never dogs. It is amongst the worst insults in india – bah am disgusted. enough said. Just wondering if Hindu mythology has a god that is an incarnation of a dog. But am very happy that desis won oscars.
87 · melbourne desi said
the word slumdog refers to how the existing elite class considers Jamal. This is not far from the galli ka kutta/therunaai epithets hurled in India. (and “slumdog millionaire” is obviously to explicitly identify the constraint).
81· MoorNam on February 23, 2009 04:40 PM · Direct link
Manufacturing is almost as dead as blushing. What we have is an economy where people give haircuts to each other.
A very timely article http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/20/business/wbmake.php
87 · melbourne desi said
really? you called them uncle toms earlier.
87 · melbourne desi said
The origin of the film came from an Indian novel, written for an Indian audience. That’s the origin of the whole thing. This book was adapted into a screenplay by a Brit. There main director was British, but the co-director was Indian. The most famous actor associated with the film, Kapoor, himself comes from Dharavi and endorses the film.
It’s a multinational production, like an Indian director filming Oliver Twist in London.
Melbourne desi is right. I don’t think the elite class calls the slum dwellers as “therunaai”. I don’t know about the Hindi usage. But definitely calling someone or some group as “therunaai” would not be tolerated now. Slum is called derisively as “cheri” and slum dwellers are called as “cheri vasis” but definitely not “therunaai”.
81 · MoorNam said
It’s not a prize for the most educational film.
For what its worth, I don’t think Anil Kapoor was ever from Dharavi. I am pretty sure he is from Chembur.
Looks like the original novel was titled as “Q and A” not “Slumdog millionaire”. that is expected, calling some one a dog is considered pretty offensive in India.
92 · Ponniyin Selvan said
what? people don’t use therunaai as an abuse anymore? the point of that word is to highlight that jamal is consistently dismissed contemptuously by all the members of the “elite class” he comes into contact with as a mere slum dweller. especially the character played by anil kapoor is clearly obsessed with class (he definitely sneers “a chaiwalla wants to earn a million!”), and irfan khan cannot believe that a therunaai will know three musketeers (to which jamal counters with something irfan should know but doesn’t).
94 · umber desi said
You’re right. I saw this CNN special where he said that he was from “this slum right here” (pointing) and I assumed that he was in Dharavi, but he probably wasn’t.
95 · Ponniyin Selvan said
umm.. that is the point, not that jamal is worthy of contempt for that reason.
It is the responsibility of all one billion and counting Indians in India, first and foremost, to address poverty in India. Obviously, as the film reveals, what little has been done, is no where near enough. The way Indians treated one another in the film, lets assume is accurate as so many on this board seem to say, was revolting and horrific.
I’m racking my brains. But I think this is the first time that I have seen a movie titled with a “slur name” and that too representing a hero. It’s kind of odd in India.