Slumdog Millionaire. Poverty porn. Child star for sale.

Nothing ever surprises me anymore about life in this world.
More so when the news is from India, which everyday offers more plot twists and turns than any soap opera can.
Here is another example. A child actor from Slumdog Millionaire is (or was potentially) up for sale! I have excerpted the following from a news item in the Times of India, which investigates about the reports of the potential sale:

‘We expect

Rubina More Pics

compensation’

Slumdog Millionaire child actress Rubina Ali’s father has, reportedly, decided to put her on sale. In a bid to cash in on Rubina’s international stardom, her father Rafiq Qureshi has put her up for adoption, demanding nearly 200,000 pounds (Rs 1.8 crore approx). He offered the deal to an undercover fake sheikh from the international tabloid News of the World. “Yes, we’re considering Rubina’s future,” Rafiq told the undercover reporter. “I have to consider what’s best for me, my family and Rubina’s future,” he added.

Rafiq blamed Hollywood bosses for forcing him to put his daughter up for sale and claims, “We’ve got nothing out of this film.” News of the World’s undercover reporter approached Rafiq acting as the representative of a wealthy Arab sheikh, who wanted to adopt the girl. “Yes, we’re considering Rubina’s future,” Rafiq replied, and asked him to talk to his brother-in-law.

Rubina’s uncle Rajan More confirmed, “Yes, we’re interested in securing our girl’s future. Rubina’s life is miserable and she lives with her stepmother. Most of the time she stays with me because she’s not happy at her parents’ home. Obviously, if you wanted to adopt, we could discuss this, but her parents would also expect some proper compensation. We’re talking of around 50,000 pounds for this to happen.”

Just awful. But, in a way it also exposes the reality of life in the slums.

Was, therefore, reminded of the stinging criticism of the movie a couple of months ago--that the movie is nothing but "poverty porn". A quick google search, and here is an excerpt from that Times column:

Like the bestselling novel by the Americanised Afghan Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Slumdog Millionaire is not a million miles away from a form of pornographic voyeurism. A Thousand Splendid Suns is obsessed with rape and violence against women, the reader asked to pore over every last horrible detail. Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn.

The columnist then noted:

When we are suckered into enjoying scenes of absolute horror among children in slums on the other side of the world, even dubbing them comedy, we ought to question where our moral compass is pointing.

And, this observation in Huffington Post certainly makes us wonder about "poverty porn":

Apparently, tours of Mumbai slums are experiencing a boon since Slumdog Millionaire won eight Academy Awards -- more evidence that this film created an emotional connection between Western audiences and the characters it depicts.

A report in USA Today certainly adds credibility to the notion that the movie has triggered a touristy interest in poverty:

The movie's recent premiere in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) sparked complaints among some of Dharavi's estimated 1 million residents, who live and work in an area smaller than New York's Central Park. But it also has boosted business for Reality Tours and Travel, which leads eight to 15 tourists a day on guided tours of the slum.

Reality Tours co-founder Chris Way estimates that sales are up by about 25% since Slumdog Millionaire's release. Though he credits some of the increase to a gradual rebound in tourism after terrorist attacks in Mumbai killed more than 170 people in November, publicity surrounding the film has played a big role.

Oh well ....

Slumdog Millionaire: post-Oscar notes

First, this comment from Tunku Varadarajan, who wrote many interesting pieces in the Wall Street Journal until the arrival of Rupert Murdoch:

Maybe it's a result of 200 years of colonialism, but Indians are world champions at caring - really caring! - about what foreigners (more accurately, Westerners) think or say about them. They will live blithely with impressively foetid slums in their midst, thinking nothing of the juxtaposition of Victorian-era poverty and world-class, 21st-century living standards. But the national outrage stirred when a Western film-maker uses “slumdog” in the title of his film is an incandescent sight to behold.

That foreigner's neologism (“slumdog” doesn't exist in real parlance in India, although gali ka kutta, or alley-dog, comes close) is thought to heap more shame on the land than the slums themselves. And yet when that same film, with that same neo-imperialist title, is fêted by tuxedoed Americans at an awards ceremony watched across the globe, Indians burst with pride. Eight Oscars, yaah! Isn't that a record? Isn't A.R. Rahman the best composer in the world? Isn't Bollywood bloody wonderful? And aren't our slums a lesson in how to overcome adversity and cruelty?

Aren't our slum people stoical, resilient, self-reliant, courageous, fraternal, resolute and inventive? Aren't our slum people the world's best slum people?

Yes, we people from India are a strange lot. I routinely tell my students not to try to "understand" India because it is full of complex contradictions. There is no neat little narrative. Maybe India is truly a postmodernist society :-) So, I tell them to merely keep up with what ever goes on there ....

How celebratory is the mood in India? My mother, who rarely watches movies, and definitely not any new ones (I think) was all pumped up about AR Rahman grabbing two Oscars. The newspaper that I grew up with, The Hindu, had extensive coverage, including an editorial!
Here is an excerpt from that editorial:

The staggering interest in the fate of Slumdog Millionaire at the Oscars and the delight and celebration at its sweeping victory is a reflection of a curious but revealing fact. Although it has been made by a British Director and funded by a European company, it is seen by many at home as an Indian film. Unlike in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (which also won eight Oscars and which was also about how one man overcomes insurmountable odds), the cast of Slumdog Millionaire is almost entirely Indian. More importantly, the style that permeates the film is a curious amalgam — one that represents a true cinematic union between Hollywood and Bollywood. This interesting marriage was represented also in the choice of the film’s music, which earned India’s finest modern musician A.R. Rahman, whose compositions reflect a fusion of west and east, two richly deserved statuettes for the best original score and the best song. The recognition earned by the man who was once described as the Mozart of Madras should go a long way in opening Indian popular music to the world. India impacted on this year’s Oscars in another way, and one that deserves a special mention: the best documentary award to Smile Pinki. Shot in Bhojpuri and Hindi by Megan Mylan, it is a story about an Indian girl with a cleft lip who is socially ostracised before a social worker helps her avail of free surgery. In the midst of the delight over Slumdog Millionaire, we need to pause to also celebrate the victory of this life-affirming documentary about a real fairy tale.

To bring things to a full circle, and relate all these to where I currently live and work .... well, Megan Mylan who made Smile Pinki has Oregon connections :-) Here is an excerpt from the Statesman Journal's report:

Although the Mylan family moved to Texas after Megan finished elementary school, Jack and Irene Mylan kept their home in southeast Salem, and they return to visit each summer.Jack was a longtime law professor at Willamette University until moving on to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He since has retired.

Oscar predictions

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The DaColbert Code - Oscar Predictions

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

Slumdog Millionaire bombs in India

Think about this: if you live in India, and are either living the life in a slum, or are middle class walking or driving past slums everyday, or are the upper class where you have no concept of the reality of the slums, well, why would you want to go to a movie hall to watch a movie about slums, a kid in the outhouse falling into human shit that is underneath, the violence in the slums, the religious hatred that exists among a few Hindus and Muslims, ...... even though the movie is more about love, and doing the right things, ....?

It is no wonder then that

On Friday, a day after Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, the movie filled just 25% of the seats for its debut in theaters across India, the country of its setting. Buoyed by the hype the movie has generated in the U.S. — along with its Oscar nods and four Golden Globe awards, Slumdog on Sunday won the "best cast" award from the Screen Actors Guild — Fox Searchlight released 400 prints of the film across India last weekend. But while Indian critics have largely embraced the movie, audiences are staying away. Theaters showing the movie averaged 50% of capacity on Saturday

The Time report adds:

For many Indians, the film's subject and treatment are familiar to the point of being banal. A lot of Indians are not keen to watch it for the same reason they wouldn't want to go to Varanasi or Pushkar for a holiday — it's too much reality for what should be entertainment. "We see all this every day," says Shikha Goyal, a Mumbai-based public relations executive who left halfway through the film. "You can't live in Mumbai without seeing children begging at traffic lights and passing by slums on your way to work. But I don't want to be reminded of that on a Saturday evening." There is also a sense of injured national pride, especially for a lot of well-heeled metro dwellers, who say the film peddles "poverty porn" and "slum voyeurism."

Oscars: Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire

The Oscar nominees were announced earlier this morning.  Two of the movies with lots of nominations are nothing but Forrest Gump retold in different ways.  Of course, Gump itself was a retelling of Zelig in some ways.  

Well, earlier I noted how Slumdog Millionaire was so much a Forrest Gump version.  But, as the following video clip shows, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is really the best adaptation of Gump :-)  What creativity in these guys, eh! I wish I were half as creative as these talented people are!

The Curious Case of Forrest Gump - watch more funny videos

Gran Torino

It is awful that Hollywood waits until the end of the year to release its good movies--the kind of movies that eventually show up in the Oscar nominations list.  We then have to squeeze in so many movies into a very short time period before they disappear from the cinema halls--yes, we can watch them on DVDs later, but there is something special about watching the movies in a big theater with a bunch of others.

So, this time it was Gran Torino.  

For the most part, it was a neat movie.  But, at many places, it was stilted and put-on.  It did not have the kind of nuances that Eastwood played with in Million Dollar Baby, even though there were plenty of opportunities.  The old man's shift to tolerating and liking his Hmong neighbors was quite sudden, compared to the personality we were made to understand.  

I liked the way the movie ended, though it would have been better if the storytelling had involved a little bit more of the character being introspective--the nuances that I miss.  

Later, as I was driving back home, I thought that maybe the movie was the right one for the times for another reason: the "big three" are still stuck in the years of the Gran Torino, while the auto market itself had moved on to Toyotas, Hondas, and Hyundais!