Column:

A pre-Oscar meditation on 'Slumdog Millionaire'

The Oscar favorite offers some insight into India's slums.

By Lindsay Eanet

Published Feb. 20, 2009

Like many of you, I'm very excited for the Academy Awards this weekend. I will be watching them at 12:30 in the morning (and in Spanish), but I will be watching them nonetheless. And like some of you, I became enamored with "Best Picture" frontrunner "Slumdog Millionaire."

And it's an easy film to like. You have a skilled auteur like Danny Boyle, a fantastic team of Indian actors and the luminous soundtrack from A.R. Rahman, all placed in the context of a relatively feel-good rags-to-riches love story.

But for all the acclaim the film has received and all the hype surrounding it, its presence brings up much larger questions about the way America sees the rest of the world through film.

While Dev Patel and Freida Pinto dance a spirited Bollywood number on "Ellen" to the delight of the studio audience, there has been plenty of criticism of and negative reaction to "Slumdog" in the country it depicts. A recent Time magazine piece argues many Indians view the poverty and slum life depicted in the film as so normal it's almost banal to see them on film, that it would be no different than Bollywood making a movie about Appalachia or Compton. On the other hand, that sort of portrayal may be the most accurate representation of India most American audiences have ever seen and could actually be a better starting point for dialogue than prior representations of India on film.

But there is still the issue of Western filmmakers adding their own perspectives and embellishments to the story. According to a Slate.com piece by Dennis Lim, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy actually made up the term "slumdog" for the script, a term that has resonated with audiences on both hemispheres (and has led to protests in India).

The trouble with Western filmmakers telling stories for film or TV dealing with the developing world is that they usually end up meeting one of two extremes: blissful exoticism ("The Darjeeling Limited," "Cool Runnings," pretty much every James Bond movie) or brutality ("Blood Diamond," "24").

What's interesting about "Slumdog" is that it manages to do both. There is Boyle's use of vivid color and light and A.R. Rahman's white-hot soundtrack that give the locale that exotic, sun-drenched feel, not to mention the good-looking actors in the lead roles. But at the same time, most of the depiction of protagonist Jamal's childhood experience in the slums is incredibly brutal, filled to the brim with abject poverty and violence.

So the question remains. Why are the only images most American consumers get of the non-Western world are the ones that only seem to touch on humanity's most primal instincts (violence and lust)? If it's not James Bond seducing some bronze beauty in the South Pacific, it's Jack Bauer beating on African soldiers in the middle of a coup. This notion even permeates the fashion world, as seen in American Apparel's jungle-inspired "Afrika" line.

There are the obvious answers, like the one about films needing conflict to function, and there's no denying that stories from the Eastern Hemisphere often involve conflict. But to understand the other half of the world, one can't just recite statistics about poverty or know the names of parties involved in a civil war. "Slumdog" may succeed in the sense of making the viewer care about India and its people, but to best fully comprehend life in India or anywhere else, the stories we receive should represent more aspects and more real, honest stories of the developing world with those who know it well at the helm.

As for the Pussycat Dolls' version of the film's theme song? That is a different debate entirely.