The Use of Poverty Porn in Slumdog Millionaire and Its Effect of the Western View of India

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is a film that features a character, Jamil Malik, who lives in Dubai and is considered an ignorant young boy. Jamil Malik had never went to school or college and would not have known any of the answers for the game show, “Who wants to be a Millionaire” but was given the prejudge of being on the show because he grew up in the slums of India. Jamil’s life experiences allowed him an

As a first generation Indian-American, I am no stranger to being a part of a distinct community while observing two unique cultures. Traveling to India exposed me to a dynamic population with rich diversity comprising of numerous languages and differing religions. Though these individuals may have had differing customs from their neighbors, there were similar ambitions to conquer grinding poverty. This poverty can be clearly noticed by seeing citizens sleeping on floors of a railway station, or the lack of air conditioning in searing hot weather. The frailty and mortality of the human condition was starkly visible in India. As a fellow human, I was humbled not only by the lack of privilege and opportunity of many citizens, but also by their

Slumdog Millionaire is a British Drama Film, set in India. India is the second largest country by area in Asia, and with over 1.2 billion people it is the second most populous country in the world, after China. The film was released in 2008 and portrays the different aspects of India as a country. Throughout the film different themes are addressed especially the issue of poverty. The word Slumdog refers to someone who lives in a slum, as does Jamal Malik the protagonist in the film.

To be a slave to others ideologies, is to give up your own sense of freedom and lie to your own self. When our own self interest is put behind others, it makes us feel lost and uncertain in our own life. We are not sure what to do with our lives. In life we are faced with many hard circumstances that are not easy to overcome, but if we can reach back to our old roots we can free ourselves from our patternistic lifestyles and pursue what we want to do. In the short story “Behind the Headlines” by Vidyut Aklujkar, we see life through the main character Lakshmi’s eyes. Her life has been taken over by her husband’s life and she is trapped living the same way for 12 years. Lakshmi’s life can be a parallel to a news story itself. When we first hear about breaking news, we don’t know much about the story since new information is coming out- In this short story, when we first start reading we aren’t given too much information. As the news keeps covering the story, we are given more background on the event and all the circumstances that led up to the event, and as the news reporters get to the end of the story, we are finally given a conclusion that either makes us happy or sad. In this short story case, you are left feeling happy that Lakshmi found her way out. When we are stuck in a rut and not able to take control of our own life, we become lost. We when can overcome our circumstances and get away from our daily conventions, we are able to find ourselves and become who we really

Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire follows two brothers from the Juhu slum in Mumbai as they face the trials and tributes of growing up in poverty. Although Salim, the elder brother, is given the same childhood experiences and trauma as his younger brother Jamal, his drive and hunger for power lead him to a life of crime, corruption and misconduct. These actions later have a detrimental effect on his relationship with Jamal, which in turn, becomes his demise. Boyle uses a range of effective film techniques to develop Salim’s growth as a character which helps to communicate the idea that ambition can enhance an individual or be the reason for their downfall. Throughout the film, Boyle uses the varying stages of Salim’s life through

Both the movie Slumdog Millionaire and the novel White TIger were set in India, but the two pieces tended to respresent two ideas that clashed together. In Slumdog Millionaire, the main character is honest and rises above corruption, making it out of the slums of the world and even gets a girl! Balram in White Tiger, however, succeeds in life by become less human and more corrupt. The novel itself pretty much laughs in the face of the usual story of the good guy winning.

While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.

I chose to learn a little bit more about Indian culture, and I thought Slum Dog Millionaire was a great resource to do so. This movie depicts the story of 2 young Indian boys and their journey in life through love, hardship, and culture. The story starts out with the two boy living a happy life with their mother, but when their mother dies from the religious wars they are forced to learn to fend for themselves. On their journey they let a little girl tag along on their journey. The movie depicts what starts out to be a struggle to survive then they against all odds makes it out and make a name for themselves by winning India’s version of “Who wants to be a millionaire”.

Poverty and oppression is a serious condition that is prevalent even in today’s modern society. Women and children are exposed to poverty and subjected to a life of injustice. One of the countries where such problems still occur is in India. Despite the country’s modernization, there lies an undercity where the disparity of wealth is transparent. These social problems are thoroughly described in movies and literature such as Slumdog Millionaire and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Catherine Boo, the author describes slum life for a set of individuals and the hardship that their social conditions confined them to. Another movie that gave insight to slum life in India is Slumdog Millionaire

Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.

The life story of the protagonist Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire is built through the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and a series of his flashbacks revealing how his life experiences gave him the right answers to every quiz question in the show. It displays the way he formed his destiny. On the day when running away from the Hindu rioters who brutally killed his mother just because of the religious difference, Jamal accidentally met Latika. Driven by the

In Danny Boyle’s film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a vast range of effective film techniques are used to communicate not only transitions and character traits/personalities, but also the ideas of how power can corrupt individuals, and how ideas can be communicated, such as how ambition can enhance an individual, or be the reason for their downfall, and how our past informs our future; our outcome in life is determined by where we’ve come from. They are able to visualise this with the three main characters. The protagonist Jamal, the antagonist Salim and Latika.

In fact, by attempting to glamourize suffering by portraying it superficially, writers may lose the connection with us that appreciates literature. Instead, what we are left with is an over extended attempt to glorify suffering, or hide it within a guise of reality that is too savage to be true. Instead of the appreciative feeling that reality imbues within me as a reader, I am left with a sense of disgust, confusion and dissatisfaction. This feeling almost overwhelmed me while reading Adiga’s “The White Tiger” and it tainted my experience with the book. Adiga had written the novel without any firsthand experience in the rural areas of India to which his main character referred to as the darkness. Instead, being of a higher class, his accounts were based on second or third hand experiences which do not adequately depict the lower class’ realities. I found the following depiction of India’s ghettos both farcically unrealistic and eventually

In the second part of Dalrymple's thesis, he supports that the poverty in England is worse than in Third World countries and there is less moral depravity in these countries like India. When we look at Shiva Naipaul's essay "The City by the Sea", Naipaul indicates in his thesis that people in Bombay denies their terrors. To show the moral poverty in Bombay Naipaul describes the "garrulous" taxi driver who offers his young and educated cousin for prostitution. This taxi driver says “When life is hard, sahib, a man will do anything" (54). That shows the moral poverty in Bombay and how the desperate life conditions lead people to live like that. Another example of Naipaul is the people who work in The Mill Area (57). In Bombay thousands of people work in the textile industry. They work with cotton dust in humid areas. Because of such working condition, one in every six men develops tuberculosis. They don't have adequate medical care, but they work for many hours and they sleep in shifts. They work under so bad conditions but they earn so few rupees. Additionally, they are all immigrant workers from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerela, Mysore, Assam. These immigrant workers send money to their family to help them to survive. This example shows how people work and try to live and also help their family. These poor people try to survive not only for themselves, but also for their families. If we compare, poor people in England can’t

In this case let us remember the film that appeared on our screens in 2008 called „Slumdog Millionaire“. It is an adaptation of the novel „Q&A“ by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup. Set and filmed in India, the film tells the story of eighteen-year-old Jamal Malik, a young man from the Juhu slums of Mumbai. The guy appears on the Indian version of