Slumdog Millionaire

The film Slumdog Millionaire offers its audience a voyeuristic and highly-sanitized portrayal of the lives of some of India’s hundreds of millions impoverished citizens. I feel that the lack of first-person narration from the main character Jamal and any of the other characters turns the film into a vessel for the entertainment of a privileged Western audience and denies us crucial context and insight into the lives of those who live in the slums. Without a look inside what is really going on in the characters’ heads the audience is simply along for the ride, a visitor into the environment who is just passing through and following Jamal’s personal journey from afar and many will not understand the legacy of colonialism that led to the oppression and poverty shown in the movie. The director does indeed show many deplorable aspects of the lives endured by the children yet in trying to convey the strength and resolve of the residents of the slums also glorifies their plight. The audience does not get to smell the terrible stench of raw sewage running through the streets, feel the hunger pangs, or double over in pain from the illnesses caused by drinking dirty water. Without the access to the perspectives of Jamal and the others the audience can only sympathize and not empathize with any of their experiences in the film. This film is a great example of the colonialist stereotype aspect of Bhabha’s ideas on colonial discourse and does indeed both install and disavow the differences between the people of the Indian slums and the Western audience (McCleod, 64). The audience is held at arm’s length from the reality on the ground and is left to create its own opinion about the setting and situations shown in the movie, something that our privilege and lack of context does not allow us to accurately do.

Making the comparison between Slumdog Millionaire and the industry of poverty tourism in Mumbai can help us understand the more problematic aspects of the film and its relationship to colonial discourse.

http://travel.cnn.com/mumbai/play/pros-and-cons-slum-tourism-723332