Slumdog Millionaire

When I got to the part in the article Wagging the slumdog, that states "there were fears that the film would dent the city’s image as a successful center of trade, finance, and modern industry, where the wealthy live in splendid apartments overlooking the sea," it stuck in my head because when I was watching the movie I thought to myself is that really what India slums are like. The scenery of garbage piles with houses on top of them and kids running around barefoot in the trash was disturbing. The movie never did show the nice part of the town.

The director of the film has created several other movies depicting slums of various countries. It is known in India that orphaned children are often taken in by gangsters and exploited in ways such as selling yourself, disabling for begging purposes, ect. The article also states that after the mayor of Bumbay watched the video she swore to clean up the slums after ten years which is a pretty hard thing to make happen because of how bad certain slum areas are.

According to the article the director said he would rather have the hero be a Nobel prize winner, but everyone knows that the American Dream always sells movies. By using a widely known game show for the main character to make his million, the director produces a commonality between viewers and the film. The audience begins to associate Jamal's hard quest as a child with their own experiences (the film plays on the emotional aspect of the audience).

The film was very disturbing to me. I didn't like the fact that the gangsters were exploiting little children. The film also had its good points. It had a lot of karma, what goes around comes around. Jamal always tried doing the right thing instead of wrong, but he always got put into bad situations where all the cards were against him. In the end he won the money and the girl.