Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Fasting in the desert for forty days, Jesus is tempted to turn the rocks around him into bread. Instead of giving in to the temptation, he reaches back for a deep cut from Deuteronomy, and, according to Matthew 4:4, tells the tempter that “It is written”: material comfort is not enough to lead a complete life.
I have no idea if the “It is written” that glues together Danny Boyle’s amazing Slumdog Millionaire owes its parentage to the Gospel of Matthew. There are obvious cultural reasons why it would make no sense. Furthermore, the use of it in the movie seems more tied up with notions of destiny and fate. But it’s useful to keep in mind this line from Matthew when trying to understand precisely what it is about this movie that makes it so great.
1. Anti-Orientalist Concerns
My friend and I have been casually discussing Oscars for a few weeks now, and though earlier I had not yet seen Slumdog, I was pretty certain that I would love it. First, the press I had read (and respected) was generally in favor of the movie. Second, if there is a director who can craft both the heart-warming (yet not schmaltzy) and the bleak (yet not pessimistic), it would be Danny Boyle. Trainspotting remains one of the best movies I have ever seen, and Millions is a complete delight.
But against these positives was the irritation I still felt over The Darjeeling Limited, a movie that finally let Wes Anderson act out his inner racist in full. The movie seemed to be the latest installment of a series of mainstream productions that, when it came to portraying something in India without fetishizing it, were simply full of FAIL. Darjeeling was not much different from, say, Temple of Doom, or, hell, even Octopussy, which at least had the benefit of making Roger Moore interested in working on global poverty.
And even if Boyle would manage not to produce a piece of Orientalist trash, I worried, why should I believe that the Academy would not vote that way, elevating Slumdog Millionaire precisely because of its “exotic” locale, undoing the very defetishizing Boyle tries to enact? What, as my friend asked, is the main difference between this movie and some kind of inner-city feel-good drama that usually gets laughed out of serious cinema discussions? If, then, the difference is only locale, then how can the argument against Orientalism be made?
2. Pseudorandomness and Threatening the Order of Cultural Distinction
Luckily (or, at least, as applause toward the skill of the filmmakers), it is not merely a difference of locale. Without returning to the Matthew line above quite yet, a key element of the movie is how it challenges a class-based sense of cultural distinction, of cultural patrimony. But in order to see that, first we have to consider the nature of trivia and the trivia show.
Trivia is pseudorandom and unimportant. You can’t properly study for trivia, because acquiring knowledge that helps one in trivia games is usually done almost passively. Jamal shows in the movie that he did not set out to get good at trivia, unlike, say, Gloria from White Men Can’t Jump. He passively acquired a lot of information by living a busy life and retained the knowledge–maintaining retention is the real trick to trivia, which is why a show like Jeff Foxworthy’s current effort is even remotely possible. Of course, even with the life he lived, he would have failed (probably) at an American trivia show, which is why there remains a certain cultural specificity to trivia.
Yet that specificity only further underscores the importance of what Jamal demonstrates by advancing through the questions. At one point, Prem, I think, says that doctors and other educated types are the types who one would expect to advance in the show, not an “uneducated” (the word used by the news reporters) kid from the Juhu slums. But everybody knows something, as Jamal points out when the police inspector berates him for not knowing something that his five year-old daughter knows. It’s just what one knows varies widely from what another knows. Class difference has stepped in to value certain information (the third Musketeer’s name) more than other (how much a dish costs at a restaurant), even though both are very easily verifiable–the former, actually, even more easily, despite its more significant cultural cachet.
Jamal, then, manages to acquire a knowledge that is precisely useful to the trivia show format, in that a lot of the questions asked on the show are somehow tied into class-aspiration. Popular culture (and who wouldn’t aspire to Amitabh’s life?) is replaced by first local literature, and then by increasingly “upper middle-class” Western (or, at least, English) questions. But Jamal gives the lie to the fact that this cultural distinction can serve as a marker of some kind of class background or accomplishment. In part, he gets lucky, but also in part, he knows these things just because the knowledge is there for the getting.
The key here now becomes an epistemological one: why you know something becomes more important than what you know. Why do I know who the Three Musketeers are? Perhaps because I came from an upper-middle-class Western home that valued education and exposure to literature, so I read abridged versions of the novel in middle-school. Or, perhaps it’s because even before those abridged versions, I was one of three brothers and we were called the Three Musketeers since our youth, only later adding a d’Artagnan with the birth of our youngest brother. (My younger brother to this day uses “Aramis” as a username.)
And if the goal begins to be investigating why you know something, then the variability becomes much more interesting and unpredictable. Prem and the police inspector have far too narrow a view on knowledge acquisition. But they must keep that view, because the opposite threatens the social order. As Prem indicates when he says he’s the only product of the slums to get rich on the show (and even so, only on the other side of the computer), only the already rich with their expensive educations are supposed to win two crore. If a chai-wallah can do it, then suddenly the measuring of a person’s class based on educational accomplishment gets severely shaken.
The trivia show format is designed on the fantasy that it rewards sincere hard work (learning, education, reading). If its ultimately hilariously pseudorandom nature were exposed, then the winners would no longer be the “smartest” people in society (how many times is Jamal called “genius”?), but, rather, just the luckiest/craftiest. And if that’s the case, then society is now rewarding not merit based on hard work, but merit based on luck. (Is this starting to sound a little too Gladwellesque? Apologies!) I don’t think that’s the public face of hegemony…
3. “You Don’t Seem That Interested in Money”
But still, the movie is surrounded with the taint of material advancement. Focusing your energy and striving for a goal are typical, American narrative devices. The plucky underdogs have a happy montage and, just when everyone thinks they couldn’t, they pull off their victory, showing the great American didactic point that perseverence and hardwork pays off. Yet as I’ve already shown, the payoff of winning the money is not at all a testament to Jamal’s hardwork. He didn’t strive to win the show; that wasn’t his goal.
Instead, he pulled a Gatsby.
Jamal went on the show just to put himself somwhere that he knew Latika would see him. He had earlier already figured out how to get on the show, after all, and showed no interest in doing so. But then he visits Latika, and she explains that she adores the show because of its promise of walking “into a different life.” We, the viewers, understand that materially. With that kind of money, all different kinds of lives become seemingly possible.
Jamal, however, understands it differently. Through that show, he can walk into a different life, one in which Latika is with him, not with Javed. In the fantasy of a different world Latika can imagine while watching, she will see Jamal, and then, in Jamal’s fantasy about Latika’s fantasy, she will be able to imagine the different world with him. This is why it’s a Gatsby move: it’s not the money that’s important, it’s the access to a different world, where, more important than money, is the living of the life with the girl of his dreams.
Because Gatsby is the model, here, the story is no longer about striving and hard work–at least, not for material gain. It is now a much deeper, simpler love story, about something that, in classic filmmaking tradition, moves beyond the material. Slumdog Millionaire might be implausible, romantic, sentimental, or melodramatic, and I consider this move towards love a bit problematic (and a bit predictable), but it does dislodge the movie from being just another rags-to-raja tale, despite what nearly everyone watching Jamal suspects.
In this way, the movie contrasts with Trainspotting, where Renton relies on his pilfered money (stolen from his “’so-called’ mates”) to “choose life.” But the life Renton chooses is enumerated in his list of modern conveniences… the washer and dryer, etc. For Renton, life demands a certain level of material comfort, so that he could be normal, just like you, the viewer. Jamal, on the other hand, chooses life by doggedly pursuing his love of Latika. It’s a pretty big difference.
The Maliks’ religious faith comes up from time to time in the movie. It explains the murder of their mother, and we see Salim praying at one point. But the final marker comes as Salim meets his death under fire from Javed’s thugs. Before being gunned down, Salim fills a bathtub with rupees, similar to the very rupees that Jamal is winning across town. In fact, these rupees are a visual echo of the shower of rupees at the movie’s beginning, when we imagine that they are, in fact, Jamal’s winnings, not Salim’s losses.
Surrounded by this material excess, Salim bleeds all over it, demonstrating that, for however important material comfort might be, it simply is not enough (a common cinematic sentiment, which, when pounded over our heads, can ruin potentially great movies). But Salim executes one more move before collapsing dead: he manages to utter (in English) the takbīr.
4. Jamal 4:16
Salim’s last minute moment of religious declaration returns us, then, to the New Testament. And where, on the one hand, “It is written” calls to mind Jesus’s forgoing of material comfort for the knowledge of heavenly protection, the only way we can make the same claim for Jamal is if we see in his love for Latika an element of the divine. Yes, Jamal does not live on bread alone, and Salim demonstrated the consequences of trying to. But if he strains to hear what comes from the mouth of God, then it is John’s words—”God is love”—that he hears.
Yet within that all too familiar line from the First Epistle of John is also the underlying point of Slumdog Millionaire, made even better than the verse from Matthew. The horrifying events of the movie, circulating mostly around the brutal exploitation and poverty of the children of the slums, accuse the world of moving away from this simple (and rather secular) sentiment. This precise suffering of material discomfort, of living in squalor, is the result of there not being enough compassion and consideration in the world as a whole.
And so, while Alger-esque movies of class mobility solve their problems by reducing them to the individual level, where solitary actors through their inner virtue are allowed to live better lives, Slumdog Millionaire shows that individual virtue is simply not enough. For those scenes of extreme poverty to no longer make us shudder with sadness over the state of material comfort in the world, we have to strive for something bigger than just individual virtue. We need to strive for a virtuous community, where, globally, we move to eradicate the sort of inequalities that give Boyle’s movie its narrative fuel. Placing the action in India doesn’t render the poverty as distant or disconnected as much as it gives testimony to the very, very long fingers of the greedy economic system that has forgotten that there’s something bigger than money.
Now that’s a message I can support, all the way up to Oscar night. And I hope it’s a message that resonates, especially in our Yes We Can moment.
Tags: Bible, community, Danny Boyle, Darjeeling Limited, India, James Bond, materiality, Orientalism, randomness, Slumdog Millionaire, The Great Gatsby, Trainspotting, trivia
January 13th, 2009 at 17:16
i would venture that the ref to “it was written” is also in part a nod to Lawrence of Arabia– it comes up several times in that. Lawrence, at least the movie version, is pleasingly free of troubling racial/ethnic fail. maybe.
January 15th, 2009 at 0:00
Very nicely written review, and I agree with most of it. Surprised at how well-informed you are about Indian cuture.
See you on Twitter.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:59
I’m glad you liked the review. I’m collecting some material for a followup probably early next week.
January 29th, 2009 at 16:00
I’m sorry, but I find your analysis to be potentially dangerous. Jamal winning all the riches is absolutely because of luck. Sure, he goes on Millionaire and wins based on his life experiences. But it’s all due to luck. The odds that his life would set him up to win the grand prize is absurdly small. The message you’re claiming the movie gives is that the traditional notion of education and such is destroyed. Exactly how do you figure this? This is a single individual who got lucky. I’m pretty sure no other slum dweller who lived in the same conditions as Jamal would not know the same answers and lose the game. And then they’d be as poor as they were when they started out.
Jamal’s winning is due to an absolute lack of effort on his part. As the movie says, it’s entirely because of fate. If we really want to help the true “slumdogs”, if you will, is to keep this dangerous idea that they don’t need a traditional education because they can miraculously secure their future in a game show. It’s a nice idea and all, but it encourages reticense and passivity: suffering will reap greater rewards in the future. Instead, we should help them with jobs and schooling rather than perpetuate their condition. When society allows for more social welfare on behalf of the unfortunate, they don’t have game shows in mind.
And in any event, for all his suffering and for all his knowledge acquisition, he still is faced with the final question he doesn’t know the answer to! Naturally he answers it, since this is a movie and all. But for the rest of the Indian underclass, the odds of finding monetary success are far more than the one in four Jamal is faced with. And anyway, had Jamal paid attention in school, he would have known the answer. But actually working for an education is not the message this movie wants to impart on us. But this is something he will never realize because riches have been handed to him on a silver platter. On the other hand, if he had a more understanding teacher and he went to a better school, that would also have contributed to his education. That would have required social effort on society’s part, but that’s not a message the movie wants to deal with either.
I am not doubting the compassion this film has for ’slumdogs’ and I know it does want to see their lives improved. But a movie like this only makes the situation worse. Of all the millions of India’s underclass, how many will actually make it onto a show like this? One a year? And how many will get as far as Jamal did? Likely, none. And conditions will remain as they always have been, with a glimmer of false hope thrown into the mix.
February 1st, 2009 at 11:11
Cc,
Thanks for your comment, but I think you miss the second step of my analysis. I completely agree that Jamal wins because of luck–pretty much all wins in trivia are because of luck, because you can’t really prepare for it (that’s the point). And most success stories involve a huge element of being in the right place at the right time. The point is that hard-word, education, etc., are valuable, in that they widen the field of right places and right times, but they are not guarantors.
My point about “traditional notion of education and such is destroyed,” then, is only that the movie demonstrates the arbitrary nature of trivial knowledge. Because of his performance, Jamal is called “genius.” He’s no such thing. And the police inspector (not Prem, as I wrote) says that only doctors, etc., should make it that far in the show. *They* equate education with being able to win at trivia. Jamal throws that into doubt. “These things by which you measure class standing–like the ability to win at trivia games–are now no longer as reliable as you suspected,” Jamal suggests with his win.
Nowhere do I mean to suggest that education is not important as a whole. Like I said above, it widens the field of material success / class mobility. But I also disagree that the movie instills the dream of winning the show as a means out of poverty. That’s my point about Gatsby and love. Jamal wins the money *only to be with Latika*. He does it only to be with her. The money is *secondary*–it’s a means to getting to be with her. If money was the main goal, at the end of the movie, we’d see Jamal’s big house on Marine Drive. But we don’t. We see him at the train station (the very place he used to wait for Latika at 5pm every day).
And by demonstrating this, I argue, the movie grants that material concerns are important (it doesn’t criticize Jamal for cheating tourists to earn enough to survive), but it also suggests that there is something more important (love, say, or compassion, or recognizability) underlying the way humans interact in the world.
But then there’s still one more step, which I rushed through in the final paragraph. One way of looking at the “money isn’t everything” message is to say, “hey, poor people, you don’t need support because you have each other, and isn’t love the most important thing in the world?” But the movie doesn’t make that case. Instead, by not criticizing Jamal (at all) for his interest in material gain, it turns around and criticizes *us* (affluent people in the US–don’t forget that Jamal is bribed by bottles of Coca-Cola) for forgetting our *own* compassion and thinking that money is enough to solve problems of poverty. Money’s an important part of it, but not the only part. It’s our lack of compassion for our fellow humans that causes situations like those presented in the movie.
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:47
And I thank you for your reply.
I understand what you are saying about the nature of trivia games. But the difference between Jamal and a doctor is that a doctor is not trying to fight his way out of the slums. If you want to make a serious approach to improve your life, game shows are not a very bright way of doing it, and it just happens that Jamal could use a better standard of living than a doctor could. Putting aside that the questions are aimed at traditionally educated contestants and audiences, slum dwellers are every bit as prepared – and unprepared – for trivia questions as anyone else. However, if they want to make a better life, pinning their hopes on a game show is a big mistake because they live in a more fraught situation.
You are right that success depends mostly on luck (I’d say that’s a little simplified, actually, but I agree), but when you’re born with more privileges you have more advantages. Jamal has none of these advantages. In a game show situation, a member of the lower class lacking these advantages will end up being a failure on such a game show. And this is the sort of message I’m saying is harmful. Is it impossible? Of course not. But we’re talking about doing the most good for the most people. Slumdog’s message is not going to benefit the lower caste in post-caste India. You keep saying you’re talking about what India and what humanity needs. I’m talking about the implications of this film as things stand now.
It’s one thing to insist that “only doctors should be expected to win game shows.” What I’m saying is a little different. I’m saying it is more likely for the poor to improve their standard of living not by being passive (which is how you describe Jamal), but by being more proactive. Maybe all success is luck, but there is also something called making your own luck.
February 22nd, 2009 at 21:16
What if we take the game show and Jamal’s victory in it much less literally? There’s a fairly obvious metaphor in it: people born into situations such as Jamal is (abject poverty, the lowest of low class, little to no opportunity at a quality education, and at a disadvantage at every turn) are likely to only have one chance to transcend their situation and the worse the beginning, the more unlikely and remarkable that chance is. It could be a CEO recognizing your hard work and giving you a job, it could be a movie director liking your look, a gangster noticing your toughness (Salim’s case), or winning a game show. Whatever is, there’s only once chance and when it happens, if it happens, it’s against all odds.