Slumdog Million'where'?

The international cinematic success of 2008, was, without a doubt, the academy award winner for best picture that year, Slumdog Millionaire. Without any consideration of the plot, it is clear, simply from the credits, that this film is firmly situated in the age of globalized media and entertainment. The films two directors, Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, live on opposite sides of the globe, the writers are from different continents, and this is merely the beginning of the internationally sourced cast and crew responsible for the critically acclaimed film. This theme of globalized entertainment extends further into the premise of Slumdog Millionaire, in that a teen from Mumbai appears on an Indian adaptation of the popular North American game show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” The layers of globalization or what one might call international cultural flow almost become dizzying at points, between the worldwide success of the film, its combination of western cinematic tropes and those of Bollywood, the globally sourced cast, crew, and investors, and the global context in which the storyline situates itself. Honestly, untangling the complicated flows of culture involved in the conception, production, and subsequent consumption of Slumdog Millionaire would be more tedious than building a precise scale version of the Taj Mahal out of toothpicks and marshmallows. Luckily, Walter Benjamin’s and Arjun Appadurai’s articles (“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and “Global Ethnoscapes,” respectively) provide interesting theoretical lenses through which we may view and analyze such items of international creation and global cultural significance.

In his article “Global Ethnoscapes,” Appadurai is keen to examine precisely these sorts of complex intersections of the local and global and the international cultural flows that produce phenomenon such as Slumdog Millionaire. At one point, Appaduari relates an experience he had while in India with his family that illustrates the complicated cultural webs present in our increasingly globalized societies. In his story international borders are conflated and a religion is delocalized in a single moment of revelation whereupon he and his wife discover that the man they flew all the way to India from Philadelphia to visit is, in fact, conducting ceremonies in Houston, Texas. This moment of “transnational irony” is exactly what we see in a YouTube video of a Tamil group’s reproduction of “Jai-Ho” in Tampa, Florida. The many threads of international culture that are interwoven to create such a globalized product are too complex to undo in this brief context. We are able to conclude, however, that such a recreation of what was already a multinational project is evidence of our fully globalized modern condition. Our virtual communities have fully transcended national boundaries through the creation and dissemination of public and private media.


Walter Benjamin’s article argues rather successfully against the reproduction and repetition of art in modern culture. Specifically, he directs a good portion of his argument at the modern mediums of film and photography, where he asserts that the “aura” of traditional art forms is blatantly absent. While it is relatively hard to swallow this aspect of his argument as he strips film and photography of any traditional artistic merit, his adjoining allegation that repetition and reproduction of an art-piece results in a kind of cheapening is quite agreeable. In regards to Slumdog Millionaire, this latter claim can be understood through an examination of the plethora of reproductions of the film’s concluding song and dance number, “Jai-Ho.” While some of these border on being localized tributes (for example, the performance by the Tamil group) to a pop-culture phenomenon, others—especially the hyper-sexualized Pussycat Dolls rendition—are prime examples of Benjamin’s assertions. To call the pop-stars’ cover of Slumdog’s “Jai-Ho” cheap, is to make quite the understatement. Not only is a traditional Bollywood group song and dance turned into an overtly erotic visual feast for the overexposed masses, its function as a vehicle for profit is shamelessly blatant. Close-up shots of the crowd that surrounds the picture-perfect pop-stars prominently displays brand name items, including cell phones and headphones. This clearly seeks to take advantage of the kind of “distracted reception” induced by cinema and which Benjamin rails against in his essay. The audience, while assuming the role of critic, does so passively and thus cheapens the potential art form of film, or so Benjamin argues. So the cheapening is two-fold; not only is this an example of Benjamin’s assertion that simple reproduction results in a reduction in significance or “aura” we also see the exploitation of what some would consider art for the sake of the entertainment industry’s bottom line.

Benjamin’s article also speaks to the blurring lines between author and audience in this modern age where the creation or recreation of visual content (I would hardly call it art) is so simple. While his essay predates the advent of YouTube, this statement seems to be a kind of premonition of its ability to make anyone a content maker. While Benjamin might hesitate to call Slumdog Millionaire art, for the sake of argument, let us assume it is of artistic merit. Do the YouTube recreations lose the orignial “aura” of the motion picture version? Most certainly. I would even go as far to argue that such rampant reinvention and re-disemmination of inferior or derivative versions subtracts from the aura of film’s original song and dance. Just as the film influenced the production of the YouTube versions, so have the YouTube renditions caused a kind of negative correlation with the original. Perhaps Benjamin is right in this case; maybe we all are not meant to be content creators or re-creators even though the simple combination of a video camera and a laptop provides us with the means.

Sources:

Appadurai, Arjun
    1996 Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. Modernity at 
        Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

Benjamin, Walter
    2005 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Marxist Literary Criticism.

Khokar, Karan
    2009 Karan Khokar and Divya Ikara- Jai Ho Dance - Tamil Sneham - Tampa, Florida
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqWkFMoLocM

Lego Montage Films.
   2009 Slumdog Millionaire- Official Jai Ho Music Video (HD).
       http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=vRC4QrUwo9o

Rahmen, A.R. & Pussycat Dolls
   2009 Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5OyXmHD0w