Slumdog Realities
Hollywood gilds endemic poverty with a veneer of jollity, so its viewers can feel good about people living hand-to-mouth because those impoverished people are happy, content with their lot in life. We know this is so, because Hollywood films bear witness to that simple fact: The poor are resigned to their lives of want, and they truly want for nothing as a result.They remain cheerily hopeful, resilient, and demonstrate a capacity to sing and dance and laugh away their sorrows. Even while they burrow in peoples' garbage to discover discarded treasures that can be recycled and remade over into other, usable objects.
Slumdog Millionaire's child actors taken from the slums of Mumbai performed brilliantly, and were the toast of Hollywood when the Oscars were doled out in generous recognition of the box-office returns for the film. The odious conditions in which human beings are forced to live through circumstances beyond their control, the misery of their lives, their helplessness in the face of adversity somehow all manage to disappear through the courageous adventuresome of young Indian children.
Their natural affinity for acting, their brilliant presence and their capable performance made them world celebrities. The principal actors of the film, young children from poverty-stricken backgrounds, living in conditions no one in the West could even dream of, were compensated for their contribution to the success of the film. Their remuneration reflected industry standards.
Although they became stars and celebrities, when they performed in the film, they were 'undiscovered' prodigies.
Now they are simply has-beens. They had their time in the bright lights, enjoyed the acclaim that came their way, learned something, one might assume, from their experiences filming a movie for Hollywood, and then returned home to their ancestral slums. From brief comfort back to sleeping seven to a room, on the floor, with scarcely enough to eat. Back in the loving care of their proud, impoverished families.
There had been talk of setting up scholarship funds for the children, just as there was talk of providing their families with real houses to remove them away from their slum environments. But then, that wouldn't be right, somehow, to haul them out of the kind of environment and the lifestyle to which they had been long accustomed. It would somehow 'spoil' the naturalness of their lifestyles, their surroundings, their devotion to their lives.
And when a journalist, looking for a sensational story, disguised himself as a wealthy sheik, convincing the father of nine-year-old Rubina Ali who played Latika in the film, that he could make a fortune by giving the child up for adoption, he successfully won himself a front-page story. These desperate transactions occur regularly in India, but on this occasion it was a poverty-stricken celebrity child actor that was involved.
The world's attention turned briefly to the plight of the child. Her father railed at the injustice of it all, denying that he had any intention of 'selling' his daughter for three-quarters of a million dollars. And in a brief flash of anger, asked his accusers if they too, like him, had to inhabit a single room for a large family, all sleeping cozily together on the floor.
And then the father's brother put it into an interesting perspective with his observation: "Does anyone sell a cow that can still be milked?"
Labels: Human Fallibility, India, Poverty
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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