I rarely see films but I had to make an exception for Slumdog Millionaire. There seemed to be too much about it around me for me to partake in my social life without seeing it! It had hit the airwaves big time. Last Sunday the film won Oscars in eight categories, including coveted categories such as Best Film and Best Direction. Images of young members of the cast as they walked out on the red carpet of the award show were displayed in newspapers all over the UK. It was surrounded by the story of the night of British successes at the Oscars, to which Slumdog had clearly contributed. It was a proud night for British films.

The film Slumdog Millionaire was interesting at many levels. It draws on an internationally recognisable brand, the popular quiz show ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ The elements of the game show are familiar to many of us and phrases such as ‘phone a friend’ have forever become inscribed with the meaning it holds in the show. As such, the film draws on the international success of an entertainment phenomenon, and the franchising deals that have indeed gone on to help circulate this programme in many countries in the last ten years. Like some of the other popular shows, its national (in this case, British) origins have been subsumed by its international success.

However, unlike the programme, the film is clearly marked as British, drawing its ‘Britishness’ from the nationalities of its producer, director and some of its key actors. The success of the film at the Oscars has been lauded as an achievement of British cinema. Media discussions of the Oscar victory in the British press focused, right from the start, on whether this success is an indicator of the revival of British cinema and how future success at the Oscars for the country can be ensured.

Yet, it is not only the Brits who are making claims to this film. Rather like ‘Obama’ who may be simultaneously claimed by Kenya, the US and Indonesia at a minimum (though the Irish are in on tracing his routes to their land too) Slumdog too can be claimed by many others, most notably by Indians. For many Indians it is an Indian film as every scene is set in India, the narrative delves deep into the miseries of modern life in a Mumbai slum and the storyline is ultimately an unveiling of urban India. Indeed, for Vikas Swarup, the author of the book Q&A, on which the film is based, the story is wholly Indian. In an interview he says ‘I don't want to be branded as a writer catering to Western sensitivity. This is an Indian novel, rooted in Indian tradition, written with Indian idioms. It is an Indian story of Indian characters in the Indian milieu.'  Many of the film's actors, the music and much else draws on Indian people, places, objects, realities. The recognition received by the young actors from the Indian government is testimony to this claim.

Slums in India.
[image © copyright Photos.com]

However, other Indians have betrayed their ownership of the film, not with pride, but by denouncing aspects of the film as not reflecting India properly. An example of the perpetual issue of representation and replication that surrounds film analysis is the way in which the portrayal of Indian poverty, in particular, has troubled many people from/in India. Some see this as a peculiarly British portrayal – a vestigial imperial sentiment, of degradation of what has been lost in the disassembly of Empire. For others, it is not a fair depiction – it glosses over the complexity of life in urban slums. Still others comment on how they felt about this portrayal in the context of being part of a movie-going public in the US or UK. This portrayal of India seems to evoke more shame in British or American theatres, or while going out with British and American friends. These issues of representation and belonging become even more complex when understood as part of the film-going experience.

As I watch the recriminations and the adulations I am wondering what claims to national pride are being performed by the audience alongside those performed by the actors on screen? What exactly is being lost and created in these performances? Whose film is it? Or is its success that it creates either affection or disaffection in those who watch it. It perturbs them and who they are by making them reflect on what they see. Maybe that is why the award should go to…

Find Out More

Want to take your interest in social change further?

Explored the subject of International Development

Why is schooling failing in the new India?

Controversial issues surrounding Slumdog Millionnaire

About the author

Parvati Raghuram is Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research interests focus on the ways in which the mobility, of individuals, goods and of ideas is reshaping the world.

Subscribe to Parvati Raghuram's posts

 

At the end of November 2008, the world of which I am a part, became riveted by the events in Mumbai. A series of attacks occurred in South Mumbai – in the famous Chhatrapati Shivaji Rail Terminal, in two hotels – the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, and the Oberoi Trident, in a Jewish centre – Nariman House, the Cama hospital and in the Leopold Café, among others. But it is the ongoing nature of the attack on the plush Taj Tower that captivated the media. The visual spectacle of the destruction of a Victorian building, where many foreign tourists lived and where many of the world’s famous designer outlets were located, evoked a world of past and present wealth, in threat, under attack.

The stories of Mumbai were widely covered by the world press. And there have been a range of commentators on various aspects of the coverage of the attacks, especially, the media focus on Taj, rather than the many other sites where ordinary people lost their lives. As Arundhati Roy remarked, the lives of some seemed to matter more than that of others.

However, what I want to remark on here is the way in which the pictures of 26/11 and the analysis then circulated through the media. One evening an Indian friend sent me a link to a set of television programmes on a Pakistani TV channel that claimed that 26/11 was indeed India’s 9/11.

The programmes said that just as the US had perpetrated the attacks on the World Trade Centre in order to justify attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, so too had India masterminded the attacks in Mumbai in order to kill the chief of the anti-terrorism squad, Hemant Karkare, who was due to pronounce that a Hindu-led political group was behind one of the bomb blasts earlier in India. However, the anchor and the guests on this channel claimed, the Indians were unable to conduct this home-made terrorism with the panache that the Americans had conducted 9/11.

I was not the only recipient of this link – it circulated widely on a range of email groups, was shown on Indian television and became a frequently discussed topic within the diasporic community. The large number of hits on its youtube page bear witness to its circulation.

It also provoked a range of responses from those who read it, particularly a degree of disbelief and anger at the stand taken in the programme. It led to familiar calls to stop the appeasement of Muslims in India, and of Pakistan more generally. A few people argued, as Roy has, that terrorism has its routes in past injustices, and economic deprivation, not (only?) religion or regional affiliation.

Yet, it also provoked in me questions of how to deal with this text that I was sent – do I delete the link, share it with our Pakistani friends, share it with our Indian friends, ignore it? The hour-long programme was clearly inflammatory, defamatory, but also thought-provoking about the possibilities of alliances, different interpretations, viewpoints. These questions of communication and of our responsibilities about what to say, when and to whom continue to haunt me as the airwaves abound with sympathy and solidarity with those who were killed in the attacks and more problematically with critique and counter-critique which masquerades as analysis of the attacks. These questions of mediation, of the multiple roles that the media play, what gets reported, how these reports then take on their own life, are re-reported, analysed and become the material for new rounds of angst is the stuff of our lives. This blog is another, and hopefully, a reflexive part of that stuff.

About the author

Parvati Raghuram is Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research interests focus on the ways in which the mobility, of individuals, goods and of ideas is reshaping the world.

Subscribe to Parvati Raghuram's posts

 

John Sergeant.

The retired BBC political editor John Sergeant’s resignation from the popular television programme Strictly Come Dancing was one of the top entertainment stories this week. John Sergeant was by all accounts not a very good dancer and was always rated poorly by the panel of expert judges who help to shape public opinion. By this criteria he should have been voted out but he remained on the show for 9 weeks – winning the popular vote week after week.

His resilience eventually became controversial and he withdrew from the competition on November 19. His resignation has ignited much discussion in the media.

The producers of the programme have supported Sergeant in his decision; contributors to blogs on this issue accuse the judges of forcing Sergeant to leave. They are disappointed at his departure but also at the failure to make the public vote count in shaping who continues forward in the programme. However, in his resignation speech Sergeant suggested that he had quit the programme of his own volition.

He claimed that we live in a democracy and so people will vote as they like, but that his continued presence on the programme was stretching the joke too far. This democratic nature of voting and the rejection of democracy seems to be at the heart of the question on many people’s lips   - did he quit or was he pushed?

The programme Strictly Come Dancing, has a top slot on BBC One on Saturday evenings. Strictly is a game show – competition and elimination of the weaker participant are the tools through which the narrative for the next episode is written. Some people will go on to be part of next week’s programme, others won’t. The basis for the competition is talent, produced with the help of professional dancers, judged by a panel of professional dancers. And the glamour, the sequins, the sets all make Strictly a visual treat for a Saturday night. It brings the glamour of the catwalk into autumn evenings. Hence, the programme advertises itself as offering sparkle, glitz, glamour and of being an extravaganza.

Strictly Come Dancing is also part of the later versions of reality show – a mixture of game show, talent show and glitzy entertainment show. At its heart, Strictly is a reality show - the sixteen contestants who are invited to participate in it are all scripted as ordinary with regard to their dancing skills. The lack of professional dancing skills is part of most people’s everyday reality. The contestants claim ordinariness in comparison to the professional dancers with whom they perform – these contestants could be us! Yet it is the lack of their ordinariness – their high profile (but not too high-profile as to threaten the ordinariness) presence on our screens, in sport, in the news that make them interesting.

It is also through their prominence in these other walks of life that they become part of our reality – we, the ordinary people already know them. They are extraordinary but not that extraordinary that we can not be made to see how they are like us – not professional dancers. This double play on ordinariness is an essential ingredient of Strictly Come Dancing’s appeal. The extraordinary people who participate in the programme are democratised through their lack of professional dancing skills.

This double-edged nature of ordinariness extends to the audience. The panel of judges adjudicates on the performance of each set of competitors. They provide knowledgeable critique of technical aspects of dance. They are clearly experts. Yet, their commentary does not determine the fate of the contestants – that is left to the audience. Moreover, in the age of technology, this is a mediated audience, not just those in the room at the time. The multiple sites where Strictly is debated - blog sites, newspaper articles, the conversations over dinner – means that like all programmes, its effects spill beyond the room in which it is conducted.

People who watch on television or through the Internet make up the bulk of the voters. But the same right to vote also extends to those who don’t watch the programme. As participants in this multiply mediated world, those who don’t watch too may decide to express their views by casting a vote. Moreover, there is no way of distinguishing between the votes of those who watch the programme and those who don’t. It is inherently democratic, giving everyone – indeed anyone – an equal chance to vote contestants off a programme.

Clearly the adjudication of talent is then not necessarily a part of deciding who goes forward from week-to-week. Yet, the choice between contestants is often seen as an act of discernment where ordinary viewers can make judgements on dance. It places members of the lay audience (and the not so-lay, there are bound to be professional dancers who are not part of the adjudicating panel, who too use technical knowledge to vote) in the position of technical judge. It suggests that we, the ordinary people can understand and appreciate dance, and we can even choose between performers. Technical knowledge is democratised and lay people are placed as technical experts.

Most of the time the programme trundles on with some degree of consensus between this form of technical knowledge and lay knowledge, between talent show and entertainment show, between judges and the voting public. The ordinariness of the contestants is slowly removed as the participants acquire technical skills. They become talented and rightful contenders for winning a talent show. They become extra-ordinarily able to dance. Or when that fails to happen there is some consensus between the views of the technical judges and the lay people – the contestants who fail to become extraordinarily talented are criticised by the judges and voted off the programme by the voting public. Judges shape public comment and eventually the two merge in their decisions.

Yet in the sixth episode of Strictly Come Dancing this pact came undone. The ordinary people repeatedly voted to keep John Sergeant on the programme despite his poor dancing skills. They voted for his affability, his entertainment value; they ignored his lack of talent. They voted for his ordinariness but also his extraordinariness. Gaffes seem to be part of John Sergeant’s personality – after all, his most memorable broadcast was a gaffe made at the time of the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s resignation. He was standing outside the doors of NO. 10 telling the nation that she would not come out to speak to the people and before he had finished, the camera focused on the Prime Minister coming out of the door to do just that.

The judges, on the other hand, performed their role as adjudicators of talent and criticised his performance. The mismatch between Strictly as entertainment show and Strictly as talent show came to the fore. There were questions raised about the nature of the programme as a talent show, given Sergeant’s continued survival, and eventually he resigned despite continuing to win the popular vote.

John Sergeant is right in stating that we live in a democracy but the discursive powers that shape that democracy that influence voting and that make some individuals make the decisions they take are clearly far more complex. The democratic nature of the country, the programme and the role of the voting public in shaping the reality of reality television remains unclear.

About the author

Parvati Raghuram is Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research interests focus on the ways in which the mobility, of individuals, goods and of ideas is reshaping the world.

Subscribe to Parvati Raghuram's posts