Desi shame, videshi fame?
Ten Oscar nominations for Slumdog Millionaire just the other night was touted as an Indian success story.
No doubt, the movie is stunning in the way it has evolved from scene to scene. Beyond that, it is a story we as Indians have often been told and shown through the media as much as through our very own live experiences.
Who doesn’t know the travails of our streetchildren? We have been abusing them at traffic signals for disturbing our commuting peace. Who does not know of the regular maiming of this unfortunate lot by beggar gangs? We all have periodically spilled tears over a crippled child seeking alms, forced amputations, gouging out of eyes, so on and so forth.
Yes, we all know everything there is to know about Dharavi, Mumbai’s iconic slum which carries its fearful reputation way beyond the Indian borders.
It has been the backdrop of Bollywood crime thrillers over the decades. Documentaries have come a dime a dozen on it and the breed it breeds.
Meaning to say, the subject of Slumdog Millionaire is no breaking news. Yet, it is on its way to becoming a global smash-hit.
One wonders why. The so-called “patriotic brigade” feels it is not good to hog on India’s dismal inadequacies, especially if it comes from afirangi director like Danny Boyle. Even the biggest of them all — the Big B — doesn’t feel comfortable about India being shown in such bad light.
Then there is this raging debate over the movie which has become fashionable to talk about in upscale drawing-rooms where poverty porn is the most salacious timepass for the chatterati. The debate is about how right or wrong it is for us Indians to serenade a subject which may not have gotten a second glance from the Indian or the world audience if a so-to-say local had made the movie.
Come to think of it, the book on which Slumdog Millionaire is based, Q&A by foreign service officer Vikas Swarup became an Indian must-read only after the Boyle hype went into hyper boil. Incidentally, the book was published in 2005 but became an anthem only in late 2008 when rave reviews of Slumdog started hogging world headlines and several prestigious awards and nominations like the Golden Globe and the Oscars followed.
Slumdog’s most yucky scene is of a slum child jumping into a pot of human shit in his haste to seek Amitabh’s Bachchan’s autograph. Of course, this would have been too much for an Indian author to include in his book, so it has been cooked up by the screenplay writer (he has an Oscar nomination) in the name of artistic licence. Anil Kapoor, the film’s lean-mean quizmaster defends this, saying Bollywood has done this for years and that there is nothing wrong with such cook-books as films are meant to do business and sell dreams as voraciously as nightmares.
Kapoor may have a point. Indeed, film directors are no social activists. They are mere spikes in the big wheel of social change that gets churned out by the films that they make. That is the distinction Irfaan Khan has been making, when he says “remember, this is not a documentary but a fictional slice of life.”
So, should Boyle’s piece of art be applauded, criticised or merely taken in our stride? I, for one, loved the film and found little fault with it in any section of cinema-making — be it story-telling, screenplay, music, editing or direction.
My problem emanates from the fact that Slumdog shows me and you up as double-faced Indians. We live in the midst of the rot and are often party to it. But if a foreigner tells us that through his movie, we hate it. But then, that does not stop us from celebrating — after all, our very own A R Rahman and Gulzar are going to get an American honour. It is not Filmfare. It is the Oscars and that’s how colonised our minds still are.
No doubt, the movie is stunning in the way it has evolved from scene to scene. Beyond that, it is a story we as Indians have often been told and shown through the media as much as through our very own live experiences.
Who doesn’t know the travails of our streetchildren? We have been abusing them at traffic signals for disturbing our commuting peace. Who does not know of the regular maiming of this unfortunate lot by beggar gangs? We all have periodically spilled tears over a crippled child seeking alms, forced amputations, gouging out of eyes, so on and so forth.
Yes, we all know everything there is to know about Dharavi, Mumbai’s iconic slum which carries its fearful reputation way beyond the Indian borders.
It has been the backdrop of Bollywood crime thrillers over the decades. Documentaries have come a dime a dozen on it and the breed it breeds.
Meaning to say, the subject of Slumdog Millionaire is no breaking news. Yet, it is on its way to becoming a global smash-hit.
One wonders why. The so-called “patriotic brigade” feels it is not good to hog on India’s dismal inadequacies, especially if it comes from afirangi director like Danny Boyle. Even the biggest of them all — the Big B — doesn’t feel comfortable about India being shown in such bad light.
Then there is this raging debate over the movie which has become fashionable to talk about in upscale drawing-rooms where poverty porn is the most salacious timepass for the chatterati. The debate is about how right or wrong it is for us Indians to serenade a subject which may not have gotten a second glance from the Indian or the world audience if a so-to-say local had made the movie.
Come to think of it, the book on which Slumdog Millionaire is based, Q&A by foreign service officer Vikas Swarup became an Indian must-read only after the Boyle hype went into hyper boil. Incidentally, the book was published in 2005 but became an anthem only in late 2008 when rave reviews of Slumdog started hogging world headlines and several prestigious awards and nominations like the Golden Globe and the Oscars followed.
Slumdog’s most yucky scene is of a slum child jumping into a pot of human shit in his haste to seek Amitabh’s Bachchan’s autograph. Of course, this would have been too much for an Indian author to include in his book, so it has been cooked up by the screenplay writer (he has an Oscar nomination) in the name of artistic licence. Anil Kapoor, the film’s lean-mean quizmaster defends this, saying Bollywood has done this for years and that there is nothing wrong with such cook-books as films are meant to do business and sell dreams as voraciously as nightmares.
Kapoor may have a point. Indeed, film directors are no social activists. They are mere spikes in the big wheel of social change that gets churned out by the films that they make. That is the distinction Irfaan Khan has been making, when he says “remember, this is not a documentary but a fictional slice of life.”
So, should Boyle’s piece of art be applauded, criticised or merely taken in our stride? I, for one, loved the film and found little fault with it in any section of cinema-making — be it story-telling, screenplay, music, editing or direction.
My problem emanates from the fact that Slumdog shows me and you up as double-faced Indians. We live in the midst of the rot and are often party to it. But if a foreigner tells us that through his movie, we hate it. But then, that does not stop us from celebrating — after all, our very own A R Rahman and Gulzar are going to get an American honour. It is not Filmfare. It is the Oscars and that’s how colonised our minds still are.
Published on January 25, 2009 in Sunday Pioneer http://www.dailypioneer.com/152122/Desi-shame-videshi-fame.html
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