Last night I was trolling around the web, reading up on the Academy Awards nominees. I found an article about “Slumdog Millionaire” the movie about a poor boy who grows up to become a contestant on India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” As I was reading about the movie, I clicked on a link about the controversies surrounding the film. One is that the movie is less a realistic view of poverty in India, and more an exploitative look at the country’s slums.
A columnist from Britain’s Times calls the movie “poverty porn” and writes: ” … the film is vile. Unlike other Boyle films such as Trainspotting or Shallow Grave, which also revel in a fantastical comic violence, Slumdog Millionaire is about children. And it is set not in the West but in the slums of the Third World. As the film revels in the violence, degradation and horror, it invites you, the Westerner, to enjoy it, too.”
Hmmm. I don’t know that I agree with that summation. In fact, I think using the term “poverty porn” is, in its own way, exploiting poor people for the sake of selling newspapers. But I can see how someone who watched the movie might have felt uncomfortable watching it. Read the rest of this entry »
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