Bollywood And Propaganda

[Bodhi]

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This movie belongs to the genre of movies like "city of joy", "fire" and
"mr and mrs iyer". Slumdog millionaire is another reinforcement of the
western "manifest destiny" or "white-man's-burden" view of India -- the
constructed image of the "other" that the narcissistic civilization that
is the "west" needs in the process of defining its own self.

Colonized peoples in all cultures and all times in history, (whether
politically colonized or remining colonized at the psychological level
after the political colonization has ended) must be constructed in terms
that the colonizer can comprehend and control: in the case of India and
Hindus -- as irrational, obscurantist, superstitous, primitive,
divisive, territorial, violent, destructive -- and therefore,
poverty-ridden, downtrodden, immoral, corrupt -- and therefore -- in the
ultimate analysis unfit for self-determination or self-rule.

This basic process of imagining the other remains the foundation for
present-day economic-cultural imperialism via "manifest destiny" as it
was during the euro-clonial era via the "white-man's-burden".

Such dialectical image lies at the nexus of a complex game of
representations and imaginery projections. It is a play of mimesis.
Mimesis is the fundamental human capacity and subconscious tendency to
imitate and mirror what is differnt from one's self, or rather, what is
one's self-understading of oneself. Mimesis is to imitate and mirror, in
other words, one's "disowned-self" -- the opposite of one's ego ideal ,
inidividual or collective. This assumes more intense forms when differnt
cultures are confronted with one another, often in unequal, exploitative
circumstances.

The colonizing power, which in this case is also a narcissistic power,
feels the compulsion to construct a variety of imaginery representations
of the "other". Projecting their own deepest fears and the most disowned
aspects of their collective subconscious, the narcissistc west (which
itself is devoid of a sense of self, and which is a guilt-ridden
civilization) has to project an "anti-type" of themselves (as they love
to see it) in the mirror of the "other", which is the "orient" -- and
more specifically -- India.

Therefore -- as was in the days before the age of electronic media, when
Katherine Mayo pioneered this whole process by her "Mother India",
followed by a truckload of works to the same ultimate aim and purpose --
the film medium, with a more instant and wider reach and many times more
visual, verbal and vital effect, must be put to full use -- either by
the west itself, represented by likes of Dominique lapierre, Richard
Attenborough, or -- now -- Danny Boyle, or by the "native informants" of
the west -- the purchased cultural prostitutes in the form of Deepa
Mehta, Aparna Sen, Buddhadeb
Bhattacharya and the like. And the "money" used for the purchasing are
typically "critical acclaims", "awards", "reviews", and
"film-festival-entries".

Seen in this light, it can now be understood why the very predictable
and very expected ingredients will be brought our and used too in very
predictable and pre-practised ratios, whenever one needs to cook up yet
another dish that serves the narcissistic palate of the west, for it to
gratify itself with "narcissist supply" and reinforce its narcissitic
sense of grandiosity. therefore:

(1) The slum -- the foremost basic ingredient, complete with lepers,
beggars, naked urchins, goons, horribly amputated sub-human humans
begging by singing Surdas or Meera bhajans (read: in the name of
Hinduism) etc. -- must be first used in liberal amounts.

Subliminal message and image-reinforcement no.1 -- (a) India = slum,
India = poverty, (b)India = hunger, © India = primitive/barbaric
inhumanity(amputated child beggars) and finally (d)India = Hinduism =
obscurantism/superstition/regression = poverty/hunger (begging with
Hindu bhajans), therefore, Hinduism is the culprit and the source of
depravity, and so it is the "advanced west's" burden to "rescue the
heathens" from it and replace it with its own value system and morality
and religion.

The other "ingredients" or "components" can then easily complete the
recipe --

(2) Muslims = the victims and Hindus = unprovoked aggressors;

(3) Muslims = secular and suffering and Hindus = the powerful hostile
majority;;

(4) Authorities (policemen)picking on muslims = Hindu = Hindutva misrule
and minority oppression;

(5) riot victims = always muslims (to be shown as always in panick or
running mode) -- thereby successfully reinforcing Hindi India into a
hostile savage jungle where minority lambs and sheep have to spend their
entire lives constantly running and trying to hide;

(6) Christian nuns = benevolent rescuers, selfless servers and
constantly in the risk of getting raped anytime. "Confirming" that
Hindu-majoirty India can have no decent human rights performance, and
christianity (read: western helping hand) has no welcome or appreciation
from the barbarians;

(7) blue bodied Rama = Hindu icon = inspiration behind the violent,
fanatical, irrational, insensitive, dehumanised Hindu; inspiration
behind "hindu communalism" (the sangh parivar -- Rama connection
established) = a dark,("blue" -- as also in Kali) symbol that can even
turn a pre-teen kid into a raging bloodthirsty hate-filled fanatic;

(8) Bombay Police = the authority, the ruling power, the lawkeeper of
Hindu India = always picking on the muslims = intolerant and supicious
of help from outside = helps the Hindu fanatics with the power of their
uniforms, therefore making the prevalent law-and-order situation, human
rights records and civic/public life and security of miniroties under
Hindu majority rule "very obvious";

(9) The christian church = the white, christian first-world western
*helping-hand* trying to make things better for the Hindu masses, trying
to rescue, humanise and enlighten them, but constantly hounded by the
hostile, savage heathens, who cannot go on with their evil if the church
is allowed to flourish and people are made "aware" and "emancipated";

(10) amnesty international = another form of the white, christian,
first-world western hand, extended to the downtrodden dehumanised Hindu
India, but which is not allowed by the authorities, lawkeepers and the
public (the powerful and unrestrained Hindu majority) to do its work for
the poverty-ridden heathen Hindus in peace, but is constantly harassed
and forced to try to work under very "challenging and hostile
conditions"

With these ingredients -- the essential masalas, the great Indian feast
of cow-caste-curry (to use the phrase coined by Rajiv Malhotra) is
served before the champagne-caviar-and-red-carpet cirsuit at cannes film
festival. The narcissist has his full of his essential narcissitic
supply, in fact, he satiates himself with it -- gloating over the fact
that only his modern, advanced, first-world, christian west holds the
key to the emancipation, humanization and the enlightenment of Hindu
India -- via foreign direct investment, globalisation, evagelization,
amnesty international, deepa mehta, and Miss Teresa saint of gutters.

After the cooking is done, carefully suited to the palate of the
targeted customer, the terms and phrases can be pulled out from the
ever-ready stock-in-trade pile of high-sounding "critical-review" argot
-- "intricate and cleverly structured", "breathless", "as drama and as a
look at a country increasingly entering the world spotlight", "a modern
fairy tale," "a sensory blowout", "one-of-the
most-upbeat-stories-about-living-in-hell-imaginable", "bright, cheery,
hard-to-resist movie", "a
high-octane-hybrid-of-Danny-Boyle's-patented-cinematic-overkill-and-Boll\
ywood's-ultra-energetic-genre-conventions"
"sprawling-madly-romantic-fairy-tale-epic-is-the-kind-of
deep-dish-audience-rouser" .... and so on.

The more a flim on India is pessimistic, dark, pejorative, and
dehumanisingly objectifying, the more thrilling for the narcissist is
his ego-masturbation, for now he is done constructing an image of the
"other" vis-a-vis which he can feel very good about himself and can
gather a sense of grandiosity -- by way of the film being more
"breathless" and "a sensory blowout" and "bright,cheery hard-to-resist"
-- with the occasional self-reminder that it is still after all a movie
on the "other's" "living in *hell*".

It is really as simple as that. There is no mystery at all, and there is
no reason why you or anyone else should miss it and wonder why
"contemporary film making seems to have appreciated little of these
ground realities" and why "instead we find a rehash of the old and
improbable rags to riches story in an ultra-regressive style."

It is also not at all a question of whether any side got the *historical
records and facts* straight, so that we need to ask: "When was the last
time in Indian History when an unprovoked Hindu population took to
violence?" The things is -- this kind of a thing is not refuted or
controverted in the first place -- never is it attempted -- it is only
and simply *evaded*.

But there is the other side to it -- the side that is always upto us to
actualize.

Colonized peoples -- the "other" -- in all cultures, are never just
passively informed by Western representations of it, even when theyb are
made to internalize that representation over a period of time. They too,
remain creative agents, who retain the freedom to rethink, reshape and
redeploy themselves in new ways in response to and even in subversion of
the pecking order. The hindu diaspora in the west exemplify that in many
ways, big and small.
As was in the previous century, Indians today do not have by any means
to remain passive and unreflective (save only being reactionary and
touchy), merely restricting themselves into a two-options-only perimetre
of consciuously or subconsciously accepting/internalizing the
projections and representations imposed on them, or reacting to them in
ways that play into the hands of the "other" and reinforce their
constructions in their minds even more. On the contrary, we too have (in
fact, more than any other colonized society and culture anywhere) the
potential, the ideas, the creativity and the resources to engage in a
variety of appropriative and subversive strategies. Mimesis is always a
two-way street, and peoples colonized or targeted for colonization haver
their own forms of mimesis, their own ways opf returning the favour by
imginatively representing the colonial other -- through mimicry, parody,
and satire they can sieze upon the narcissitic imaginings of the
naricissits themselves, by turning them on their heads and and
manipulating them as a source of "counter-hegemonic" discourse.
And I will say that we have failed to do that, to make use of that
opportunity so far, right from the tiem of the "city of joy" through
"fire" through "slumdog millionaire".

But one fine example of a start in that direction will be -- for
instance -- a Madhur Bhandarkar film. Tasting, sounding and feeling the
way only a Madhur Bhandarkar film can taste, sound and feel -- with
perhaps, a title (in tune with those like "fashion" or "page 3")
like..... "Secular". Or, "Foreign Aid".

And that should be entered for the cannes film festival. And that would
be a very fine and deadly example of holding a mirror up to a
narcissistic civilization.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[dhu]

Rajeev2004 comment

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Sameer said...

    A bit off-topic.
    But this is abt the topic of abuse of India by foreign and foreign-ed desi media and establishment.

    I just watched the movie Slumdog Millionaire (which was also discussed in earlier post.)
    I felt a bit disgusted...
    The name slum-dog, indicating slum-dwellers as dogs, and showing the typical scum which the foreigners esp. Limey and yankee variety likes to see and their co-horts holier-than-thou (Britisher than thou) desi servants like to see... Poor Indians, Hungry Indians and the apple of their eyes, Bad Hindus, killing 'poor' innocent muslims and 'indifferent' and 'partial' police (In actuality police is the one which acts agsinst the hindus), showing the main character as a muslim and not a Hindu which would be representative of the national population distribution (this is an example of biased sampling) and showing a Hindu girl finally eloping with Muslim...
    Well, the story might be 'good' and 'different', but the way this was shown was not good and I heard (and hence not much sure), in te original book (on which the movie is based) t<b>he orphaned hero is raised by kind 'fathers' and hence learns english and education, thus completing the 3M axis.</b>
    From the way my friends described, I thought it would be 'different' and good, but I had my initial suspicions, esp, when there was the bollywood touch (the 'secularism' touch) and the way the story turned out to be..
    felt irritated and thought I'd post abt it here. (Its 3:40 AM IST)
    I can atleast get to sleep properly now (after wasting time watching this movie).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Slumdog Millionaire isn't poverty porn, says author
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->---
Ever the diplomat, Swarup is polite to a fault about the film straying from the original plot of his novel.<b> Q and A was primarily about luck but the film is about destiny</b>. Swarup's book featured an illiterate boy winning the biggest prize on a quiz show because of miraculous good fortune, namely a full and active life having adventures in orphanages and brothels, with gangsters and Bollywood
celebrities.

But Swarup is not worried that the film has changed all that. For him the biggest change is in the name of the protagonist, Ram Mohammad Thomas, who becomes Jamal Malik.

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Slumdog Millionaire got 10 Oscar nominations. Indian press is so happy. Little are people realizing that the movie got its nomination because it insults Hindus and Indians.

Simon Beaufoy (the director) and Danny Boyle have taken a few very questionable liberties with the script (Q & A by Vikas Swarup). In the original book the hero was no Muslim. He was a true Indian with a Hindu-Muslim-Christian name. Not only did Danny make the hero a muslim, he introduced the scene of a Hindu mob killing Jamal Malik's (hero's) mother, without showing the bomb blasts that occurred earlier. For the untrained and uninitiated Western eye it seems as if Hindus woke up one day and decided to go on a "Muslim-hunt". Why did Danny change the script and show Hindus killing Muslims? Don't you smell a rat here??
Here's a link to an Economic Times interview with Vikas Swarup which confirms my statements Vikas Swarup Interview

I know a petition is started against some aspects of this movie at Slumdog petition. But I think something more has to be done to protest Danny showing Hinduism in a poor light.

[Husky]

^ TimesOfIndia is wannabe (wannabe Angelsk), TimesOfUK is the real thing and says: "It <b>IS</b> Poverty Porn"

http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/01/p...-porn.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Poverty Porn</b>
Alice Miles describes Slumdog Millionaire for what it is: Poverty Porn.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(One comment)
Refers to:
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article5511650.ece
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->January 14, 2009
<b>Shocked by Slumdog's poverty porn</b>
Danny Boyle's film is sweeping up awards, but it's wrong to revel in the misery of India's children<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Husky]

Still on that:
<b>10 Oscar nominations for Slumdog.</b> But of course:
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/01/...s-200.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The omission of Clint Eastwood (pictured, left) from the Best Actor category and Gran Torino from any of the major categories certainly stands out, as does the absence of Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel (pictured, right with costar <b>Freida Pinto</b>) from the Supporting Actor group. Slumdog did rack up 10 total nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Danny Boyle. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
via
http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/01/hin...lden-globe.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Wednesday, January 21, 2009
<b>Hindu hater wins at the Golden Globe</b>
Disclaimer: I have not seen slumdog.

I don't intend to anymore, after i read this review.

The review explains why the movie won big time -- its an anti hindu, dhimmified piece of garbage.
Give it a wide berth if you want to maintain your sanity.
Posted by AGworld at 1/21/2009 07:42:00 PM
Labels: bollywood, indian media, pseudo-history

<b>5 comments:</b>
<b>witan said...</b>

    India-hater, not Hindu-hater, though Hindu hating is an integral part of India hating
    1/21/2009 9:49 PM

<b>Chris said...</b>
    Orwellian speak "Hindus Bad, Muslims Good. Slums good, police bad. Police hate Muslims, police like Hindus. Ergo Hindus Bad." Am sure the film will bomb at the Box Office. sh1t whether packaged by Bollywood or Hollywood remains sh1t.
    1/22/2009 5:25 AM

<b>Soniya said...</b>

    More joy to come: SDM has received 10 nominations for the OScars.
    http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/01/...s-200.html
    1/22/2009 6:37 AM

<b>Incognito said...</b>
    New Leadership lesson under UPA-

    1. As head of anti-terror organisation, get caught unawares when ten terrorists land in your city, unleash terror for 3 days and kill around 200 people.

    2. Lead three of your good men to their death in the hands of two terrorists, gift the police jeep to them to create more terror without causing any harm to the terrorists.

    3. If any sincere policeman manages to catch a terrorist laying down his own life, the wife and daughter of late Top Cop will advocate setting him free so that he can kill more people.

    4. And not even a dog will go to Sandeep Unnikrishnan's home.
    1/22/2009 12:29 PM

<b>Sameer said...</b>

    The movie might as well win Oscars... Oscars are like Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prizes... politically driven...

    The movie is absolute crap.... a Paki and a Limey (who hate India and Hindooooos very much) wet dream on reel. Limeys would have loved India's partition'w wounds to have continued and their soldiers fought with Pakis and 'liberated' Northern areas from J&K. And sure you have the stupid Milliband on a Poverty tour with Rafool Ghandy. He had the nerve of blaming the 26/11 blasts on Kashmir problem!

    Its sad to see genuine Hindu/Indian voice being curbed and laughed-at by the sold-out media who are going ga-ga over Slumdog Millionaire.

    My earlier comments on an old post (after getting disgusted on watching the movie)
    https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=78...17&isPopup=true
    1/22/2009 12:57 PM

Post a Comment <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

@husky
i was trying to point out that author is trying to revel in the fame (and he is being insensitive) that movie has brought him. look at his interviews.

When Slumdog got a makeover
---
'It's more dramatically focused as a result, perhaps more <b>politically correct</b>,' Sawrup said of the change.
--


here is an old interview of the author.

The Rediff Interview/Vikas Swarup
------
The second question to Ram Mohamamd Thomas on the quiz show is, 'What is written on the Cross? NRI, INRI or RNI?'
----

[Husky]

http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story....0482678&ref=rss

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Zeffirelli: Pope Benedict needs makeover</b>
1:10PM Sunday December 16, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI . Photo / Reuters

ROME - Italian film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli is offering his services to Pope Benedict as an image consultant, saying the German pontiff comes across as cold and needs to review his wardrobe.

Zeffirelli, acclaimed for movies such as Romeo and Juliet and Jesus of Nazareth, said in an interview with la Stampa daily the 80-year-old pope did not have "a happy image."

"Coming after a media-savvy pope like John Paul II is a difficult task ... Benedict XVI still communicates coldly, in a way that is not suited with what is happening around him," Zeffirelli said.

"It's an issue I have been discussing with people who have key roles in the Vatican," said Zeffirelli, who has directed some Vatican television events.

"The Pope does not smile much, but he is an intellectual. He has a very rigid Bavarian structure," he said.

Zeffirelli, 84, added that papal robes were "too sumptuous and flashy." "What is needed is the simplicity and sobriety seen in the other echelons of the Church," he said.

<b>Zeffirelli said he was in regular contact with the Pope's closest aides and had also made proposals to "defend the image of faith in cinema, the image of the sacred."
</b>
"The Holy See intends to pay a lot more attention to this," he said.

He said today's religious films were "a horror that the Holy See does not know how to stop.
<b>
"I am a Christian down to the depths of my spirit. I can't stand by while this disaster unfolds. I am available to put myself at the service of the Church," he said.

"If they officially give me a supervisory role, I will do it full-time."</b>

The Vatican was not immediately available for comment.

- REUTERS<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->'Roman' Church already has many filmmakers in Italy and beyond. In India too.

How catholic (or otherwise christian) is Danny Boyle - isn't that an Irish name?

[Guest]

wiki
---
Boyle was born in Radcliffe, Lancashire into a working-class Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Ballinasloe, Co Galway, and his father was born in England to an Irish family.[1] For a while, Boyle seriously contemplated priesthood and attended religious school as a teenager.[2] Boyle was discouraged by a priest from joining the clergy; later in his life Boyle stated "I don't know if he was trying to save me or the priesthood."
---

[Guest]

The simple fact is if Danny had shown Christians mob going on a killing spree (without reason), he would never have been nominated for the Oscars. If he had shown a Muslim mob someone would have issued a "fatwa" against him. Showing a hindu mob...well that is OK.

It is a shame that in newspapers and opeds there are some Indians who still argue for this movie. Even a small country like Khazakstan, when a movie called "Borat" was released took out a full page ad in New York Times, pointing the good things in their country (and the movie was just a comedy). India being such a big and rich country are silent. Believe me, a lot of Americans know as much about India as we know about Khazakstan. Movie like Slumdog and Love Guru are the first introduction to them about India and Hindus.

[Guest]

After Mumbai attack, people know very well, Muslims role in terrorism. People think Hindus are just coward race. Indian Government failed to give protection to Hindus in India, what one can expect. I hope Global Hindus will avoid watching this movie. Love Guru is worst movies of this year.

[Husky]

http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/01/kan...ionaire-is.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Saturday, January 24, 2009
<b>kanchan gupta: slumdog millionaire is all about defaming hindus</b>
jan 24th, 2009

but naturally, kanchan. limeys are looking to curry favor with mohammedans any which way. why not show hindus murdering mohammedans, whereas the usual reality is the opposite. it's an inexpensive way for limeys to look good to saudi moneybags, at the expense of hindus, and of the truth. and they know no hindu is going to start sending suicide bombers to limey high commissions. this is the same attitude codified in that sick man david miliband's recent comments about kashmir and pakistani terrorism: it is not just the liberal-left partyline, it is the BBC's and the british government's partyline. after all, as a nation of shopkeepers increasingly on a downward slope, they have to get their money from somewhere: so they apply their lips to arab and chinese bottoms. natch!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanchan Gupta

http://www.dailypioneer.com/152164/Slumdog...ing-Hindus.html

Posted by nizhal yoddha at 1/24/2009 09:14:00 AM

4 comments: <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> http://www.dailypioneer.com/152164/Slumdog...ing-Hindus.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->AGENDA | Sunday, January 25, 2009 | Email | Print |

<b>Slumdog is about defaming Hindus</b>

Kanchan Gupta

In keeping with American politics of the times, Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated for as many as 10 Oscars and our deracinated media, which constantly looks for inspirational ‘good news’ stories that invariably revolve around Western appreciation of ‘truthful’ portrayal of the Indian ‘reality’, has gone into a tizzy. Saturday’s edition of a newspaper published from New Delhi had a blurb on the front page that read, “The Slumdog story: How ‘Danny uncle’ and his ‘moral compass’ created the biggest ‘Indian’ blockbuster — and why you should watch it.” Predictably, the chattering classes, who had been blissfully ignorant of Vikas Swarup’s Q and A (as they had been of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger till its perverse denigration of India and all things Indian wowed the judges of last year’s Man Booker prize) are now making a beeline for the nearest bookshop for a copy of the novel, whose title has been suitably changed to Slumdog Millionaire so that the book and the film are eponymous and both publisher and producer can encash the extraordinary hype that has been generated. Late last year, there was similar hoopla over AR Rahman getting the Golden Globe award for the music he has scored for Slumdog Millionaire. An approving pat on the back by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it would seem, is the most important marker in an artiste’s career. Those Indian musicians who haven’t got the Golden Globe are not worthy of honour at home just as Sahitya Akademi award winners are not worthy of finding space on our bookshelves, leave alone feature on news pages or news bulletins.

The larger point is not really about going gaga over an American award or a British prize, but how they are seen as India being admitted into the charmed circle whose membership is strictly controlled and is by invitation only. That invitation invariably follows a certain pattern; it’s not merely the keepers of the gate chanting, “Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers let him go…” Apart from the fact that the ‘tigers’ in this case are not hollering but salivating at the prospect of seeing themselves clutching a handful of trophies on Oscar night, the nomination process is far more rigorous than we would think, with filters to keep out those films and books that do not serve the judges’ purpose or pander to their fanciful notions — in this case, of India. Aravind Adiga crafted his novel in a manner that it could not but impress the Man Booker judges who see India as a seething mass of unwashed hordes which worship pagan gods, are trapped in caste-based prejudices, indulge in abominable practices like untouchability, and are not worthy of being considered as an emerging power, never mind economic growth and knowledge excellence. Similarly, Danny Boyle has made a film that portrays every possible bias against India and structured it within the matrix of Western lib-left perceptions of the Indian ‘reality’ which have little or nothing in common with the real India in which we live.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Boyle’s film is about a slum where extreme social exclusion, political suppression and economic deprivation define the lives of its inhabitants. He has made every effort to shock and awe the film’s audience by taking recourse to graphic and gory portrayal of bloodthirsty Hindu mobs on the rampage — the idiom that defines India as it is imagined by the lib-left Western mind — laying to waste Muslim lives (a Hindu is shown slitting a Muslim woman’s throat in an almost frame-by-frame remake of the videotape that was released by the killers of Daniel Pearl) and property. There’s more that makes you want to throw up the last meal you had: Hindu policemen torturing Muslims by giving them ‘electric shock therapy’, street children being physically disfigured and then forced to beg, and such other scenes of a medieval society where rule of law does not exist and every Hindu is a rapacious monster eager to make a feast of helpless Muslims.

Nor is it surprising that Boyle should have cunningly changed the name of the film’s — as also the book’s — protagonist from Vikas Swarup’s Ram Mohammad Thomas (a sort of tribute to the Amar Akbar Antony brand of ‘secularism’ which was fashionable in the 1970s) to Jamal Malik. The name implies a Kashmiri connection, and we can’t put it beyond Boyle suggesting a link between Jamal’s travails — it is his mother whose throat is shown as being slit by a Hindu — and the imagined victimhood of Kashmir’s Muslims who, the lib-left intelligentsia in the West insists, are ‘persecuted by Hindu India’. Asked about the protagonist’s name being changed, Swarup is believed to have said that it was done to “make it sound more politically correct”. There is a second hidden message: The Hindu quizmaster on the ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ show has doubts about Jamal, who gets all the questions right, not because he is a ‘slumdog’ but because he is a Muslim; so he sets India’s Hindu police on the hapless boy. Swarup did not quite put it that way in his book, but the film does so, and understandably the critics in Hollywood who sport Obama buttons are impressed.

The last time depravity was portrayed as the Indian ‘reality’ was when Roland Joffé did a cinematic version of Dominique Lapierre’s City of Joy. In that film, the Missionaries of Charity were shown as the saviours of an India trapped in filth, squalor, poverty and Hindu superstition. Some two decades later, Boyle has rediscovered Joffé’s India and made appropriate changes to fit his film into the Hindu-bad-Muslim-good mould so that it has a resonance in today’s America where it is now fashionable to look at the world through the eyes of Barack Hussein Obama.

In her review of the film, “Shocked by Slumdog’s poverty porn”, Alice Miles writes in The Times: “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. Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn.” Commenting on the BBFC's decision to “place this work in the comedy genre”, she says, “Comedy? So maybe that’s it: I just didn't get the joke.” It’s doubtful whether most Indians, Hindus and Muslims, would get it either if they were to watch Slumdog Millionaire.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Husky]

^ One of the comments at that Rajeev2004 entry:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Online protest by HJS to send protest emails to Oscars committee to reject the movie for its Anti-Hindu prejudice, please sign if you agree:

http://www.hindujagruti.org/denigrations/protestslumdog

[...]
(rest at link)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Oscars always vote in garbage. No one here watches the Oscar shows anymore (a handful used to a decade ago, back when I think it started getting replayed or streamed in full). And probably the same disinterest is mirrored in other non-US countries.

The Academy Awards/Oscars is no more than glorified self-conceit on the part of American 'cinema' that they broadcast the private show the world over. US generally can't make films anymore - with a few notable exceptions, and they have no taste in films either. I remember catching one particular instance: that year when Sidney Poitier was honoured with some award and then Halle Berry won best actress and Denzel Washington won best actor, though IIRC Russell Crowe had the better movie that year and Denzel had had far better roles in many previous years. Of course it was all political: the Oscars are such a racist org, that they decided it was time to change their well-known public image in one go and finally award people with African origin a best actor/actress before the world at large started criticising the boring event as being racist. Well it IS racist. The way the academy chose to "get the entire racism thing out of the way" by indiscriminately choosing to give Best Actress and Actor to Berry and Washington in the same year AND when no African-origin person had ever yet received either award before, is highly offensive. African-origin Americans should have felt slighted. And Denzel should have asked himself why he hadn't won Oscars for better roles which he had undertaken before.

But then, AmeriKKKa extends to their Oscars. The academy awards don't merely have bad taste, they have always been motivated. <i>Of course</i> they will nominate slumdog. It is a very christian piece. And a christian piece on India must win, win, win if the christos can help it. How else will junk get any recognition?
But classless movies don't obtain class just because they get adorned with cheap oscars, you know.

[Capt M Kumar]

<!--emo&:devil--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/devilsmiley.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='devilsmiley.gif' /><!--endemo--> I have objections to it's very title which is the old way of Britishers calling Indians dogs. <!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Shambhu]

Saturday, January 24, 2009
<b>Slumdog Millionaire makes Millionaires at the cost of Slumdogs </b>
There is poverty in Bharat (misnomer: India), no doubt about that, thanks to those who have (mis)ruled the nation especially after so-called Independence. But then which country doesn't have poverty? Still the way in which Danny Boyle has exploited it in his commercial movie Slumdog Millionaire and also turned it up side down by filling it with lots of Anti-Hindu prejudice is disgusting. And those who are shamelessly lauding the exploitative movie at Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes located in West Hollywood or nominating it at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's Oscars located in Beverly Hills should know that as per World Socialist Website and The Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty, the largest population of Homeless in the US live in the city they are all identified with: Los Angeles. (Source: Los Angeles: city of the stars becomes US homeless capital, Homelessness in Los Angeles County, Cartifact: Downtown Los Angeles Homeless Map)

This movie is full of Anti-Hindu prejudices that "evil" Hindus are out to get "innocent" Muslims which is a completely horrendous, mythical, nonsecular and absolutely politically incorrect point of view. A clear violation of "Revised guidelines for shooting feature films in India by foreign nationals/co-productions" and Cinematograph Act 1952 laid down by Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India. Like Mr. Kanchan Gupta said in his article "Slumdog is about defaming Hindus" in The Daily Pioneer,
"Nor is it surprising that Boyle should have cunningly changed the name of the film's — as also the book's — protagonist from Vikas Swarup's Ram Mohammad Thomas (a sort of tribute to the Amar Akbar Antony brand of 'secularism' which was fashionable in the 1970s) to Jamal Malik."
The film also makes fun of respectable Hindu God Shri Ram to show him as "evil" who is out to kill people especially Muslims. This hurts my religious sentiments and believably so of Millions of devout Hindus in US and around the world. He shows that Hindu mobs murder Muslims and not vice versa, completely suppressing that these riots were during 1993 terrorist bomb blasts by Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar (a Muslim follower of Radical Islam now living in Pakistan, India's most wanted, 4th on the World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list by Forbes) and that allot of Indians irrespective of their religion suffered in such heinous Muslim-Hindu riots. I say it again that any life lost because of such crimes was a life lost of an Indian irrespective of his/her religion. It should be condemned equally. Why show a bias?

It just proves that to fit the movie in west likeable square, one should fill it, as Boyle did, with Make-fun-of-India masala to make it western acceptable along with Anti-Hindu prejudice tadka to make it secularly acceptable (or politically correct) then fry it to exploit the poverty of the nation to make it socially acceptable and voilà we have an Indian poverty porn curry which will make every nationalist patriotic Hindu and Indian embarrassed and make the producers, cast and crew of the movie Millionaires at the cost of the exploited Slumdogs (which is no less than a derogatory and condescending term).
http://satyabhashnam.blogspot.com/2009/01/...fame-hindu.html

----
By the way: Look at the sanskrit in the orange (BG 2:47). I like the way the fonts show N in the karmanye...

[Guest]

Without seeing movie, Idiots in India were celebrating, now some are shell shocked. I don't understand why Indians need back padding from West?
As Jay Leno said in his show, I don't think Indians had seen this movie, but hey they are celebrating. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

<b>Slumdog’ kids were paid poorly, allege parents</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->They claim that the eight-year-olds were poorly paid for working in the film that has won four Golden Globes, and has been nominated for 10 Oscars.

According to them, Azhauddin Ismail and Rubina Ali were paid less than many domestic servants. While <b>Rubina is said to have been paid just 500 pounds for a year’s work, Azharuddin received 1,700 pounds.</b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Too low.

[dhu]

<b>Slumdog Millionaire: Another Husain? </b>
Himanshu Jain


I chose a Saturday evening to watch this historic film that won India its biggest-ever international film award. I decided to watch Slumdog Millionaire because like any normal Indian, I got excited over the international award. A Guru Dutt, Shyam Benegal, a Sanjay Leela Bhansali or Madhur Bhandarkar never won an international award of this repute; by that standard Slumdog and A.R. Rehman represent the best of Indian cinema.

The film begins in a police torture room in Mumbai. Its central character is young Jamal Malik, who wins Rs. 20 million in a TV show called ‘who wants to be a millionaire.’ I felt sure it was a realist or art movie of the genre popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Certainly it was different from routine commercial potboilers. But as the film progressed, I became confused, hurt and angry.

26 November 2008 and Slumdog Millionaire are the two most recent events that have put Mumbai on the map of world consciousness. There are striking similarities between both.

Ajmal Kasab grabbed the limelight when captured on CCTV, walking through parked trains at Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminal, shooting innocents. Slumdog hero Jamal Malik, by coincidence, is seen in the last shot at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal, passing through one parked train after another to reach girlfriend Latika.

<b>Were Ajmal Kasab to see Slumdog, he would feel vindicated about his Mumbai killing spree. All propaganda elements used to lure Muslim youth towards terrorism are strangely present in the film. </b>A riot by Hindus and exploitation by the rich and famous create hurdles in the way of Slumdog’s young hero.

Both events have conned the Indian people and left them to their fate. After 26 November, a false assumption that the world supports India in the war on terror has reassured the Indian people. After Slumdog’s Golden Globe, Indians similarly feel that world have recognized Indian creativity. Few understand the poor light in which Indian culture and poverty have been projected, and India denuded of self-respect.

The backdrop is Dharavi, Asia’ largest slum, its street urchins, crime, abused and exploited children and child beggars, not to mention the ubiquitous underworld, its signature tune.

Unlike Mr. Rahul Gandhi who selectively tours poor homes and spends the night at villages talking to rural Kalavatis to learn the problems of the poor, the rest of India is already acquainted with the worst problems and exploitations of these slums. We are aware of the deprivation and absence of basic human rights in the slums.

But we also know that these slums are home to millions of dignified people fighting poverty, working hard and breaking through into the outside world. The slums are places of enterprise, small scale industry and innovative business that keep millions of families going. They have wonderful volunteers and social workers who may not be as richly funded as Mother Teresa, but provide genuine health care, education and opportunities. We are winning the war against misery and poverty because we keep hope alive.

Slumdog’s focus on the slums and the exploitation is unduly harsh and hopeless, missing the dignity of the poor and the checks and balances of Indian culture. The script seems to cater to a particular international mindset; hence the sinister plot to murder Mumbai a la 26 November. Danny Boyle shows us a very hellish Mumbai and does no justice to the unconquerable spirit of Mumbai.

Anil Kapoor, as host of the game show ‘who wants to be a millionaire,’ lampoons Jamal Malik for being a tea-boy (chaiwala) in a call center in India. This is totally alien to Indian culture; yet the game host is made to frequently humiliate the poor hero and mock his poverty with a venomous edge. It made me distinctly uneasy.

Indians are actually used to appreciating people rising from the ranks of the weak or under- privileged.<b> Slumdog denied Indian society this credit, and in fact paints Indians as intolerant and anti-poor. An alien attitude, compatible to a Western audience, is projected upon India, to win accolades for a British director </b>(though it is true that Rehman won the Golden Globe for his musical score).

Some of the prejudice is upfront. Jamal Malik ascends the ladder of the game show. One question (Rs. 16,000/- prize money) is: What is in the right hand of the epic hero Lord Rama? The answer should be obvious. But our hero goes into flashback – he sees a mob of bloodthirsty men with saffron headbands running behind skull-capped men running for cover! The hero's mother is burned to death in this mob. Escaping somehow from this riot (the allusion to Gujarat is obvious), the hero sees a vision of Lord Rams with an arrow in his right hand; hence the right answer; hence Rs. 16,000! (Actually, every child in India, regardless of faith, would have witnessed the mohalla Rama-lilas annually, and not need a vision – or hallucination in the midst of a riot – to know the answer to this one).

It is scenes such as this that feed the jihadi quest for justifications for their blind hatred and violence. The Mumbai killer, Ajmal Amir Kasab, would readily associate with this scene, regardless of its relationship with a more complex reality, Godhra, for instance, which was not preceded by any such event.

Later, to win Rs. 2.5 lakhs, Anil Kapoor asks: who was the poet who penned the bhajan “Darshan do Ghanshyam?” Cut to another flashback. This time a gang is kidnapping slum children and making beggars of them. It teaches the kids to sing “Darshan do Ghanshyam,” blinds them, and makes forces them into beggary. Again, the hero escapes and gives the right answer - Surdas.

True, there are such gangs in India. But the use (read misuse) of the sacred names of Sri Rama and Ghanshyam to portray the immense pain and suffering of the hero – a man with a visibly different faith - is hardly justified. The scenes are provocative and unnecessarily suggestive of a larger agenda; there was simply no artistic or creative need for this in the script.

Escaping the gangster, our hero jumps into a running train and manages to reach the Taj Mahal. This is equated with arrival in heaven. In backdrop of the Taj Mahal, children are shown earning huge sums of money – actually the big dollar tips that generous White tourists mythically shower upon India’s poor. In one incident, our child-hero is beaten by the Indian (naturally) driver of a White American tourist. He weeps – “this is real India,” and immediately his saviour peels off a US $ 10 bill, with the mantra: “this is real America, son.” (In real life, as the police in any Indian state will tell, paedophiles are made out of this Good Samaritan stuff; only Hollywood doesn’t know it).

The show’s host by now becomes jealous of this slum-dog, who is on his way to win Rs. 10 million. He tries to trick Jamal into giving an incorrect reply, but our smart cookie manages to win. In a fit of irrational hatred towards this slum-dog, the host then calls the Police to get the hero arrested for fraud. But our Hero manages to win his freedom and comes back to claim his Rs. 20 million.

Is this how American TV shows like “who wants to be a millionaire,” “American Idol” or “Big Brother” are designed? Do producers and hosts fix the winners, and is that why the host of Slumdog could not stand a non-entity winning?

Muslim youth across the border and in India already use incidents like the Gujarat riots to claim lack of opportunities and discrimination by Hindus. This film provides ‘reasons’ to justify their prejudice. The Censor Board has of course, been sleeping on the job, no doubt over-awed by the Hollywood biggies.

Nowhere does the film showcase the tradition and modernity of a unique country where the two do not clash, as in many other societies. It prefers a slanted stress on poverty and exploitation, robbing in the process the dignity and commitment of poor Indians who are heroes in the real sense of the word.

Slumdog has a sinister agenda; it is tailored to the prejudices of a western audience, to reinforce bias about India and particularly the so-called plight of its Muslim citizens. Hollywood should now turn the camera towards the joys of Muslims experiencing democracy (sic) in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the Muslim world.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->All propaganda elements used to lure Muslim youth towards terrorism are strangely present in the film.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Also, Slumdog Millionaire feeds to the pet socialists themes where one need not be educated/intelligent but can make it big in India, lady luck will coast him through.
Now average Abdul without luck or education has to rely on the vote-bank pandering politicians to fulfill that dream. And we all know what happens when those dreams aren't met and who has to bear the brunt of that frustration/anger.

The author of the book (Q & A) is supposedly from IFS or a former(?) diplomat. Any info on him?

[Guest]

Headlines

<b>SLUMDOG protesters ransack cinema in India...

Don't call us dogs!

'We will burn Danny Boyle in effigy in 56 slums here'...

Say children were exploited... </b>

Where are Chatterjees, Teesta, Roys crowd?