Slumdog Survivors Don’t See Millions from Film’s Success

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Author: Aidan Lewis

Last week, I finally had an opportunity to see the film Slumdog Millionaire on the big screen. The movie thrilled me; I was amazed by its brutal realism, dauntless portrayal of poverty, and bittersweet storyline. I had expected a film that would dance lightly around the reality of slum life, violence, and bureaucratic corruption in India. Instead, Slumdog Millionaire presents a candid look at the social, economic, and hierarchical woes of the country, with a message of hope in the midst of bleakness. Sadly, the film could have been so much more; instead of using his poignant and realistic depiction of lower-class Mumbai to benefit the poor, director Danny Boyle has exploited them, and the Western world has happily bought into it.

I have no problem with Boyle’s choice to have slum children play the roles. They clearly knew what life is like in Dharavi Slum, India’s largest neighborhood of urban poor. What I found offensive, however, was the director’s choice to fly the children to America for the Oscars, dress them in expensive clothing, let them be gawked at and doted upon on stage, and then fly them back to Mumbai. The manner in which this was conducted reeked of old Western maladies-a false sense of goodness and overwhelming apathy.

Firstly, the child actors have experienced the kind of false goodness and generosity that Hollywood consistently offers. People loved the idea of underprivileged children from a developing nation transcending their circumstances. It’s the American Dream in action: individuals born into poverty rising to the top against all odds. Except the story didn’t end there-the children went back to Dharavi, amidst the controversy of exploitation and underpayment. It’s easy for people to feel magnanimous when they can make impoverished children’s lives look like a fairytale momentarily, but the reality is no one cares about the aftermath unless it makes a good story.

Here is a harsher and more sobering reality: no one in the Western world cares about the millions of Indians still drowning in the squalor and hopelessness of slum life. No one cares about the children who weren’t in the movie. They never made, and probably never will make, international news. No one knows, or wants to know, their names. At best, Boyle provided an escape route for two children. The rest don’t matter to Boyle or anyone else, because they don’t make a good story. Slumdog might have achieved its full potential if its profits had gone towards education, sanitation, housing, or something to benefit the slum community as a whole.

The news surrounding Slumdog Milloniare and its child actors epitomizes the times in which we live. The West is all about symbolic gestures-clicking a button on Facebook to save Darfur or stop global warming, drinking Ethos water to compensate for our consumption, or offering two slum children our attention and money. One might argue that the film does good simply by raising awareness about poverty. I’m sorry to say this, because it runs contrary to what we hear every day: awareness doesn’t mean a damn thing. I would rather be ignorant of problems, and innocent for what I don’t know, then aware of them and guilty for what I don’t do.

Everything in our culture is designed to make us feel that, with minimal effort, we are positively changing the world. It’s a lie. No one has ever dramatically changed the world by living in complacent comfort and buying an occasional Fair Trade banana. Real change demands sacrifice. That giving should be convenient is really a contradictory notion-giving is rarely convenient; it is usually taxing. Convenience is just a cover for our overwhelming apathy.

Aidan Lewis is a first-year ECLS major. He can be reached at alewis@oxy.edu.

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