The Three Musketeers

Media -> Globalization -> Education

Meet Slumdog Millionaire

Well, Madam, we poor can also ask questions and demand answers.

And I bet you, if the poor conducted a quiz,

the rich wouldn't be able to answer a single question.

  I don't know the currency of France,

but I can tell you how much money Shalini Tai

owes our neighborhood moneylender.

 I don't know who was the first man on the moon,

but I can tell you who was the first man to produce illegal DVDs in Dharavi.

 Could you answer these questions in my quiz? (Boz). 

From Q&A by vikas Swarup, the book on which Slumdog Millionaire is based.

Home: people, poverty, depression

+ Telecommunications Equipment

HOPE

The hero of Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal Malik, is as intrepid, indomitable and pure of heart as an idealized medieval knight . . . or a three musketeer; therefore, I’ve chosen Jamal as the champion of a story of my own.   In my story “the Three Musketeers” are: Media, Globalization, and Education.  Where the original Three Musketeers novel is set in the 17th century and recounts the adventures of a young man who suffers misadventure, my story depicts the misadventures of the 21st Century hero in Slumdog Millionaire, who integrates economic, political, and cultural systems across the globe uniting Media, Education, and Globalization – as the motto of the original musketeers announces, “all for one, one for all.”

MEDIA

Look with me first at 21st Century media.  Media is a catchall term that encompasses technology from paper and pencil to internet video conferencing that is making it easier and easier for humans to communicate.  No longer mere convenience but necessity, mass media outlets efficiently communicate information to large groups of people.  As a child chased by authorities through the streets of Mumbai, the people never even looked up from garbage-picking in the polluted river, or dying fabrics in the slum alleys, but Jamal had their attention when he appeared on the TV show.  As a slum kid rises from poverty to superstar in quest of true love, Slumdog Millionaire exemplifies the ability of media, when by way of entertainment, is not only able to communicate hope, but engages marginalized people as consumers.  As a tool that reflects the people who use it, Jamal utilitzed it to find Latika.  Of course, while media can be used to convery certain perspectives while ommitting others, the bottom line is however, that media is everywhere, and it is here to stay. 

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EDUCATION

"What can a slum dog possibly know?" is the question asked of Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire.  Allow me an educated guess. 

Although this is a touching feature film of hope and love, it is replete with  torture, child prostitution, begging rackets, and anti-Muslim massacres. This is a story of, not only, how life affects art, and art affects life, but how life affects education, and education affects life, as well.   "All for one and one for all." 

That Slumdog Millionaire won the  2008 Academy Award  for Best Picture proves that it's a work of art.  It combines sweet notes and harsh tones to adapt to its fable-like source material, Q & A by Vicas Swarup.  My hero ascends from the slums to triumph on Who Wants to be a Millionaire because his crushing past has provided him with all the right answers - his life affecting his education. 

The Associated Press said the child stars of the Oscar-winning work of art left the "red carpet" to India to a "heroes welcome."  Like the scene in Slumdog Millionaire where a celebrity flies in and police and heavily armed guards were needed to escort the children through the cheering crowds.
In the 1960s author Grace Paley argues in A Conversation with My Father, 

"Oh, Pa, this is a simple story about a smart woman who came to N.Y. C. full of interest, love, trust, excitement, very up to date, and about her son, what a hard time she had in this world."

Her father replies, "Actually that's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic, you think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education. Sometimes the other way around, the person's a kind of dumb innocent, but he outwits you and you can't even think of an ending good enough."

In 2010 "average with a good education may be more than enough for a good life, even when the education is of life experiences. 

 Paley says to the father in her story, "No, Pa," I begged him. "It doesn't have to be. She's only about forty. She could be a hundred different things in this world as time goes on. A teacher or a social worker. An ex-junkie! Sometimes it's better than having a master's in education."

A masters in education would not have blessed Jamal with the answers he needed and has to inspire the Proletariat as well. In her short story, Paley is able to show that with  a more optimistic view she is able to transcend the past and forge ahead into the future.  Pale says, "I'm not going to leave her there in that house crying, (Actually neither would Life, which unlike me has no pity)".

GLOBALIZATION

An article in Economic and Political Weekly explains globalization in a movie like Slumdog Millionaire,“Popular Bollywood films with their appeal to the mass audience of uprooted peasants, factory workers, unemployed, uneducated and poor can decolonize the imagination of the Indian masses . . . efforts at indigenization, or forcing local cultures to adopt to one another. . . occur when western corporations impose their products on other economies"(Chakraborty). 

Westernizing] and interrogation [examination] of prescribed [approved] discourses [dialogues] of modernity [freshness, newness] and history deserve credit for making possible the creation of public debates within a culture where the majority of the population is non-literate, and unable to partake in elite discussions of culture and modernity” (Chakraborty).

While J. M. Tyree says in Film Quarterly, "the largest number of films in the world are made in Bollywood.   I want to add that in 2010, because people from all over the world work in Hollywood and Bollywood, a uniquely Indian movie is as nearly impossible as and exclusively American movie.  Globalization means a friendly fusion of diverse classes, cultures, tribes and tongues.  Unity and struggle infiltrates every corner of the universe through globalization. 

  "All for one and one for all."

Media -> Globalization -> Education

Meet Slumdog Millionaire

FEATURING

 

• Apply the ideology of the international masses
• Contradictions,
• Differences
• Similarities
• Exposing, educating and unity of opposites
• Mutual transformation in people of varying ideologies.
• Equality and democracy, justice and injustice from the proletariat's point of view

Work Cited

Bos, Carole D. "Slumdog Millionaire" AwesomeStories.com. Date of access: December 8, 2010.
       <http://www.awesomestories.com/flicks/slumdog-millionaire>.

Chakraborty, Chandrima.  “Subaltern Studies, Bollywood and Lagaan."  Economic and Political Weekly. Page 1879 of 1879-1884 Vol. 38, No. 19 (May 10-16, 2003). http://www.jstor.org/stable/4413550.

Paley, Grace.  A Conversation with My Father.  New York: Noonday Press, 1972. http://users.ipfw.edu/ruflethe/A%20Conversation%20with%20My%20Father.htm

Slumdog Millionaire.  Dir. Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan. 2008.  DVD.  Fox. 2009.

Tyree, J. M.  “Against the Clock: Slumdog Millionaire and the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”  Film Quarterly.  University of California Press: Summer 2009, Vol. 62, No. 4, Pages 34–38 , DOI 10.1525/fq.2009.   Posted online on June 4, 2009.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/40301354