The real face of Slumdog Millionaires!

There can be no disagreement on the fact that Australia’s Hugh Jackman brought the 2009 Oscars out of the doldrums, the normally boring format and the repetitive entertainment value it has offered for so many years.

But, there is, however a growing section of society, both at home and overseas, who are criticizing the 8 Oscars bestowed on the Indian based movie, Slumdog Millionaire. Billed as a rags to riches story, it would appear that the only people to go from rags to riches in the making of the movie were the 3 main cast members, the director and the writers.

In India the movie has been quite rightly labeled, “poverty porn” that only titillates western audiences with its portrayal of slum life.

The film which has gripped the attention of the western world’s movie goers is basically about the slum dwellers of Bombay (Mumbai), the abuse of children, the maiming of children in order make them more appealing as beggars and of police torture. The movie shows the town where goats wander freely among the food shops, flies are swatted from the food, mentally ill adults shout abuse at passers by, mangy dogs walk among the children and the 10-year-old star, Azharuddin Ismail, lives in a scruffy lean-to style home constructed of tarpaulins and old blankets.

Gaining more and more concern from the people of India, Priyadarshan Nair, an India film-maker, has complained strongly in the newspaper, India Today, that the film makes a mockery of India. “It’s nothing but a mediocre Bollywood film, which has used references from several Hindi films very smartly. There are no mass celebrations in the slum.’

The children of the movie were returned to the squalor of the slums of Dharavi, where much of the movie is set, and then plucked out of their miserable existence to walk the red carpet with Danny Boyle, Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto on Sunday night, only to be returned to their slum dwelling lives with no more than a months salary.

There has been a certain amount of unrest surrounding the content of Milk, with Sean Penn, a movie cataloging the battle for equality for homosexuals, and for the story line of The Reader, starring Kate Winslet, set in Nazi run Germany of the early 1940’s and the Holocaust, but no one seems to notice the ongoing cruelty, poverty and life threatening conditions affecting the children of the slums of India.

Where are our values as human beings? Obviously all wrapped up in little gold statues, snug nights in a warm cinema and entertainment of a totally disgusting nature.