They Call It Poverty Porn

Slumdog Millionaire is sweeping awards and audiences. And yet, in India, specifically Mumbai, where it is set, there are rumblings of discontent. Okay, more than rumblings. Many are calling it poverty porn, graphic images of disturbing poverty opened up as entertainment for a predominantly Western gaze. Others are protesting the use of the word "dog," a huge insult for Indians. One of the biggest protests was in Dharavi, Asia's largest slum where the screenwriter lived for six months. Do they feel a sense of betrayal by someone they welcomed into their midst? Despite the fim-makers' intentions do they feel insulted by being called 'dogs?' Judge for yourself.



Here's a caveat: I have not watched the movie.

I can't bring myself to watch it. It's not because I am unaware of poverty in India. It exists, of course it does. It does so in horrifying, mind-numbing ways. And while I think some of the criticism is a bit over the top, I do understand it. India as presented to Western eyes is always a source of some discomfort to me. It's not that situations or events are necessarily fabricated...much of it is factual. It is the discomfort of an alien gaze, dissecting us from a rather lordly distance. And more than that, that these are the only images of India on film that make it into the consciousness of most Western film-goers.

We watched the Raj films in the 1980's, where dashing British officers rescued lily-white maidens from India's ubiquitous heat and dust. Is India hot and dusty? Yes! But it is also cold and snowy and mild and temperate. It is also the land of eternal snows and coastal waterways. In the Raj films India and its life under the British fell away beneath the weight of English nostalgia for the jewel in its crown.

Then, for a while we were ignored by film-makers, except for an occasional Merchant-Ivory film. But that was not wholly foreign, for Ismail Merchant was a Bombay boy. Then there were the splutters of 'Fire,' or 'Salaam Bombay.' The latter was also set in Bombay's slums and was made by Meera Nair and was a truly intimate look at life in a slum.

Here's another caveat: I have read Vikas Swarup's Q & A, upon which Slumdog Millionaire is based.



So I know the story and I don't remember as much violence and distress as I hear about in the movie (the opening torture scene, the acid blinding, etc.). Perhaps they were there but they melded into the book so much that I don't remember them three years later. I remember, while reading the book thinking that it was written almost as a screenplay. It's not a well-written book, but the concept is interesting and it was executed well. And there are definite changes from the story.

Even the central character's name has been changed. Ram Mohammad Thomas. An evocative Indianness, reminiscent of Amar, Akbar, Anthony. Those three names, markers of three religions, are stories within themselves in the book. Ram, therefore, typifies all of India and none of it. He symbolizes its three major religions and because he has all three names, none of them. He is in effect, India.

Slumdog's Jamal, on the other hand, becomes an easily graspable entity, a slumdog with a Muslim name.

I watched Danny Boyle on The Daily Show. He called it a love story, that Jamal wanted to sit in the gameshow chair long enough to be sure Latika saw him and so that they could find each other again. No matter how much he calls it a love story, the predominant images that most viewers seem to carry away are the images of violence and poverty. Those seem to be its predominant images from what I've heard about it.

And perhaps that is what its Indian detractors are responding to. Perhaps that is why, depsite all the great press (and the fact that despite all this I am sure it's a great movie) that I cannot make myself watch it. Perhaps when it is out on video I might watch it. But I can't right now amid all its hype.

Is it over-sensitivity, or is it a country cringing to watch itself yet again through alien eyes and feel its complexities being stripped away? Yes, there are movies about the Paris riots for instance, but there are also dozens of movies on its beauty and its romance.

Is it the discomfort of being measured against just one truth by a movie-watching world that will move on to the next big thing soon, and all it will remember about India are its slums and its human miserty and not much else?

I am not sure but I am thinking. And wondering.