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.

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.

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.

See you on Twitter.