slumdog millionaire questions

What do you think the film is saying about globalization of culture through media? We see the game show “Who wants to be a millionaire?” adapted in the Indian culture. Is this a sign of progress? Why or why not? What is this film saying abut the effect of money on culture?

When we think about India, we think that they are dumb and poor and that they don’t have much money because that’s the idea we have about India, but that’s not really true, we just haven’t seen the good thing there are in India. I think is a sign of progress because we can see in the film that there are rich or smart people in India; there are also nice buildings and houses and other new things. India has improved through the years. The effect of money on culture is pretty strong. If we see a country or city with a lot of money, we will think good things about their culture, but if we see them with little money, than we will automatically think that they have a poor culture and bad habits or things like that.

In one exchange of dialogue in the film during the interrogation of Jamal, the police inspectors discuss the impossibility of what Jamal knows.
Police Inspector: Doctors... Lawyers... never get past 60 thousand rupees. He's on 6 million. [Pause]
Police Inspector: What can our slum dog possibly know?
Jamal Malik: [quietly] the answers.
Discuss the irony in the film that Jamal “knows too much” and is suspected of cheating. Discuss the irony that in the end, his poverty may make him rich. What point is the film making? What is real wealth?

Since Jamal was a poor boy when he was young, and know he works as a tea boy, how could he possibly know so much? That is the irony. Where did he learn everything to be able to answer every single question at the game show? Jamal knows too much to be just a tea boy and that causes many to think that he is cheating. Jamal didn’t go to school or didn’t study college or anything; he didn’t really have an education. So he didn’t learn all these things from there.

Jamal’s poverty actually made him rich. Maybe Jamal didn’t go to school and have a great education, but he sure learned a lot to be able to answer those questions. Jamal went through so many things as young, and those experiences are the ones that taught him everything. He didn’t need studying or a great school, he learned everything from what he had to deal with when he was little. So the film wants us too see that just because poor people don’t have education, it doesn’t mean they are dumb; they might know as much or even more as us. They have to deal with so many things in life, they get many rough times and rough experiences that teach them things about life and other things. Real wealth is not about how much money you have or where you live or where you go to school, it’s about what you learn in life without mattering how you learned.

The game show format brings into to focus the culture of meaningless competition. What does the spectacle of the game say about what people value today? What values do the media promote? Are they humanizing values?

Today, people are all about money; money is more important to them than most things. And in the film, since Jamal didn’t have money, everyone thought that a poor boy like him would know absolutely nothing and that’s why they thought that he was cheating. The media promotes the same values. That’s also why we are so into money, because the media fills our heads with stuff. They have gotten many to think that having money is EVERYTHING and that it makes you happy and makes you good, and that having no money is not cool or makes us losers, but it’s not true. Money is not everything, there are much more important things.