Monday, January 25, 2010
PROMPT:
For this week, please write about the differences in representations of themes between Slumdog Millionaire and Vikas Swarup's Q&A. Just to make this a little more interesting, there's a list of some differences already available on wikipedia. Please try and find other differences. If you're having a tough time of it, think about the differences between Noir and the Bildungsroman as genres.
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The notion of bad writing, in terms of all the magical coincidences that fix everything, could also be viewed as something that might deeply appease the Indian imagination due to beliefs in destiny and karma. In the book however, I find it interesting that the coin Ram uses, being double sided, emphasizes that his triuphms have to do with his own intuition and therefore autonomy. As Dr. Shingavi pointed out, a rather uncompassionate mainstream opinion is that those that suffer and are poor are so deserved due to past life actions or karma. Therefore the book challenges, however romantically, not only the socio-economic reasoning behind the misconception that once a slum-dog always a slum-dog, and that poverty must invariably ruin a person's character (Ram is gentle, non-materialistic, full of moral out rage etc.), but moreover challenges the religious motivation at the heart of these misconceptions. As noted in discussion, Ram always has choices therefore he relies not on luck, money, karma, but on himself. In this sense he is doubly the hero, as he is free to make himself, not only in this life, but from whatever had passed. Of course, there are proper definitions of karma that do not just bend religion to serve middle and upper class agendas, but the book is not challenging those. The movie watered this down, as there was more "luck" and unexplained aspects, such as Jamal's ability to speak English so well. The novel provided an account of Ram's enhanced social mobility through his guardian's education, that at least attempts to acknowledge the realities of poverty (writing them out of the story), where the movie glosses it over entirely.
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