Success spawns uproar. Great success spawns great uproar. This has certainly been the case with the film "Slumdog Millionaire." It may or may not win the Oscar for best picture, but it's already carried away the prize as the most hotly debated film of the season.
I'm going to set aside the question of "Slumdog's" cinematic merits (which I and many film critics worldwide agree are numerous) and focus on the charge that has been popping up on a number of blogs: that the movie is "poverty porn." As I understand it, this accusation boils down to three issues, all of which have misconstrued the nature of art.
These critics are angered by the fact that hordes of Pepsi-sipping, popcorn-munching, affluent Western audiences are entertained by a spectacle of India's poor struggling for survival in the slums of Mumbai. They're also upset that director Danny Boyle, a white guy, is being lauded for a film about India that just doesn't get it right, that's filled with cliches and exaggeration and people who are downright bad. And last, they say the film reinforces centuries-old stereotypes about India -- dirt, poverty, chicanery and worse (think Macaulay, think Kipling) -- and doesn't show the real India, the modern India with its economic successes, the India of the reverse brain-drain, India shining.
To answer the first criticism, I'd like to point out that the film is entertaining almost as many affluent people in India as in the West -- if by affluent, we mean people whose economic status is significantly better than that of the slum dwellers. And for many of them, the Dharavi slum in Mumbai is a foreign, unseen country. Literally for some, because they live in neighborhoods that, though only miles away from an urban slum, are worlds apart; metaphorically for others, because painful, persistent realities tend to become invisible to us. As for being fascinated by the misadventures of characters who are beleaguered, and feeling better about our lives by contrast, isn't that part of the timeless pull of art? Isn't that why Aristotle praises tragedy for its cathartic value?
As to the objection that only Indians (preferably, only Indians living in India) can truly understand the complexities of their country and show an authentic India, that too arises out of a misunderstanding of the nature of art. Decades of abuse from Orientalist writers who have objectified and denigrated India in order to promote an agenda of Western superiority have fostered this mind-set.
