Slumdog Millionaire Essay Example

either awfully poor or exceedingly rich. This made the representation appear to be unrealistic because even thought there may be some people in that situation; middle class people were unsuccessful illustrated.

This was probably the case because the film wad made to suit Hollywood, as the main aim was to make sure it attracted viewers. It was not ideally written to detail India in a truthful manner, so the truth may have been twisted by the writers. The film is written with the idea that if you are born poor you grow up poor, and vice versa. On the other hand, the film also brought us to the understanding that for India, crime is an immense problem. I agree that this is true because offenses such as rape have more than doubled in the last 20 years.

However, the way in which it was shown, implies that India is quite and unfair and corrupted country lacking in justice, despite its rapid economic growth in recent years. This is, somewhat an accurate representation of modern India even though the whole of India is not like that. Nevertheless, I think that the portrayal of crime was shown in the most extreme way so that we feel as if we ourselves could never relate these crimes. Many people have said ‘the movie depicts different issues but just so happens to be set in India because these things happen around the world.’

This means that crime is a problem all over the world, so the different events shown in the film do not necessarily relate to India. In the film, Maman, a gangster who tricks and

then trains street kids to become beggars, finds Jamal, Salim and Latika and keeps them. His initial aim was to teach them how to sing, and then blind them so that they could raise more money for him, but Jamal and Salim escape, upon knowing this. Later on, Latika is show to be sexually exploited by the gangster because she is a virgin.

I believe that Slumdog Millionaire was accurate in its representation of crime, but it should have shown crime in such a way that would not make India seem completely bad. The reality of the poor conditions in the slums was precisely explained by the film. The film leads us to the conclusion that there was uneven development because some areas had slums, whilst other had high-rise buildings. This indirectly displayed the economic growth in India, as the total GDP has increased exceedingly in the last 30 years.

We learnt from the film that people in the slums have a few square feet of space, and sometimes a roof over their heads. There is usually no running water and a public toilet has to be used, which is usually a hole in the ground. Typically their work is day by day. They'll stand on a street corner or a place where some people may come to hire day laborers, and they generally earn no more than ? 2, depending on the job. Children often do not go to school, and even if they do, the facilities are extremely poor.

As the film showed us a whole class of children that had to share just one book in cramped class room.

Often there is not enough to eat, and everywhere is overcrowded. The fact that these different aspects were revealed to us in the film, backs up the general public’s perception of poverty. Its ‘reductive view’ of slums does however reinforce a negative attitude towards India, which is greatly frowned upon among Indians. They’ve also made it seem as if the slum dwellers only care about material goods, power and dignity, which is not true. Labour was a smaller theme in the film, but was nonetheless presented.

Child labour was frequently shown, especially the act of begging, and so was slavery. According to 2001 Census, India had 12. 6 million children, aged 5–14, who work either part-time or full-time. Poverty, lack of schools, poor education infrastructure and growth of unorganized economy are considered as the most important causes of child labour in India. It is indicated in the film that, generally, children, especially babies, are preferred to use as beggars, as the raise more money. This is proved when Salim hands Latika a crying baby in a bid to make more money whilst begging.

This is somewhat a good representation of India, but it should not be assumed that all of India is like this, because places such as Chandigarh do not have many beggars. Overall, India has developed rapidly in all areas such as poverty, income and trade, but Slumdog millionaire was unable to clearly show this. It showed that some areas have made more technological advances then others, for example the television studio, but it did not manage to get the full picture. Since 1991, India’s GDP has quadrupled but this astounding

fact was not even vaguely made clear throughout the film.

The film only managed to concentrate on all of the negative aspects of India, and so the view wasn’t balanced. To conclude, we cannot fairly say that Slumdog Millionaire is an accurate representation of modern India because the film was set in one area. We were not shown all of India, and so after watching this film one can easily assume that all of India is in poverty, which we know to not be true. If the writers wanted to embody India correctly, the film should have shown different areas of India, both rich and poor, so that the audience can easily assess how modern India really is.

Also, the writers could have decided to make this film as biased as they wished because the aim was to sell the film to the Hollywood market, which is generally used to a lot of dramatic scenarios. An Indian film director himself said that the film was ‘A very anti- Indian film. All bad elements of Bombay commercial cinema are put together in a very slick way. And it underlines and endorses what the west thinks~ of us. It is falsehood upon falsehood and at every turn it is fabricated. I was ashamed to see it was being appreciated widely in the west.

Fortunately us Indians are turning it down. ’ As said before, this quote was by someone who had grown up in India and knows for himself what India is like. The things that he provoked me to wonder if the entire really was based on nothing but lies, or if this

man was just embarrassed by the way India was portrayed. Personally, I think that the film was successful in representation of some aspects of India such as the living conditions, but it was partial in the way it showed India as a whole.