The 2008 film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is an Indian movie directed by Danny Boyle, the movie has attained worldwide popularity having accomplished ten Oscar nominations. The film is characterized by an all exclusive Indian cast and is positioned in Mumbai. The movie focuses on account of a youthful boy named Jamal who is born and bred in the slums of Mumbai. He plays a reality game show where the questions asked to him reflect on his past life experiences. As a result of this, Jamal wins the award of twenty million Indian Rupees. The plot of the movie is drilled by Jamal and his brother Salim trying to manoeuvre through the hardships in the poverty torn slums. This is further depicted through Jamal’s quest to win the love of his childhood girlfriend, Latika. The movie represents the image of post-colonial India, and at the same time it portrays the Western world perception of the country. The film further depicts the cultural diversity that exists in the country. The key characters are evenly encircled by the poverty, violence and greed of Mumbai city. The movie deeply portrays the socioeconomic state of the country and also reveals the disparities involved in the determination of the country’s cultural distinctiveness. The manipulation of international conglomerates and their consumer behaviour is evaluated inside the fabrication and development of the movie.
The movie reflects both the Hall’s perspective of culture as a screen and the Hofstede’s five dimensions in the various cultural patterns depicted to exist in India. According to Hall, culture is represented by many things, which form a network. These are depicted in the interaction and association of the people, the cultural distinction between men and women, the territoriality, the learning and acquirement of culture, defence and the use of resources to meet the environmental circumstances. Essentially, culture works on three different ranks which include; informal, formal and practical levels. The informal aspect of culture is learnt mainly through imitation from other people’s activities. The formal type is taught through perception in a process controlled by emotions where people learn from their mistakes. The technical level of culture is mainly conveyed explicitly as of a teacher to the learner. In the context of this movie, the existing conditions of Mumbai have forced the people to adapt to a different culture of life. For instance, due to the rampant conditions of poverty that exists there have been rising situations of child labour as depicted in the film. From the film, it is shown that Jamal and his brother get involved in illegal businesses cartel to pose as beggars in the streets of Mumbai.
They extort money from unsuspecting people for their masters, and they are paid some little wage which they use for their livelihood. Therefore, the poverty conditions have lured them to adapt a culture of pretending in order to beg money from the people. The young boys have imitated the activities that are carried out by other people in the city so as to earn money. This represents the informal aspect of Hall’s cultural practices. This is shown to continue especially on Salim’s side where he is involved in criminal business cartels even on his adult life. Jamal’s girlfriend, Latika is also lured into prostitution business in Mumbai to earn a livelihood. This behavior is adopted from what she observes from other girls in the neighbourhood. From the movie, Mumbai is characterized with numerous brothels where young gals are used by adults in money making business. These have initiated a culture of prostitution on these innocent girls who are fuelled to perform these acts by the conditions of abject poverty that continue to persist in the city slums. The Hall’s formal aspect of culture is displayed when Jamal participated in the game play.
This is verified by the fact that people in Mumbai had the perception that playing the “Who wants to be a millionaire” game would help to bring them out of the poverty conditions. For this reason, Jamal participated in the game and truthfully he became a millionaire in the end, and he was free from the poverty situation. Through this game, the criminal behaviour of Salim is corrected though it results to his sudden death. Salim accepts to stop undertaking his criminal acts when he allows Latika out of his bosses’ house. This happens when he learns that his brother Jamal was participating in the game show and was about to win the prize. Thus, this game develops a culture in the people of Mumbai that portrays success from the hardships that people go through. Through the game, Jamal emerged as a celebrity from rags to riches. He was celebrated by many people because he was just an ordinary boy from the slums, and yet he still made it. The technical aspect of culture is portrayed from the school where Jamal and his brother attended. They are taught about the three musketeers and their teacher nicknames them as the two musketeers due to their cunning behaviour.
As the film goes on, the two are seen to adopt the culture of the three musketeers. Finally, when they meet Latika together, they claim to form the three musketeers of Mumbai. This is a form of formal culture that was instigated by their teacher, and they adopted that in their lives. According to Hofstede’s model culture is evaluated in five different dimensions which are; power and distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty and avoidance index and the society’s long term orientation. Power and distance refer to the level of inequity that subsists in the society. In the Slumdog Millionaire, there exists a high degree of inequality because majorities of people are poor and living in the slums while a few people of the population are rich. This is demonstrated where the rich drive their Mercedes Benz vehicles along the slums where people live in deplorable conditions. As a result, Jamal was willing to participate in the game show so that he could win the money and remove himself from the extreme poverty situation. Individualism refers to the personal ties that people have in the society.
The scenes in the movie portray that people in the slums lived in harmony and togetherness hence the levels of individualism were low. Most of the people knew each other and the slums people lived like one community. Children are observed to show respect to the elderly and the people respected traditions and change was incorporated slowly. Masculinity refers to the way the society accords respect and roles amongst the males and females. In the movie, it is portrayed that, in Mumbai, the people hold respect to the males more than they do to the females. This is symbolized where girls are sold in brothels for few Indian Rupees, for instance Latika was introduced into prostitution business where other girls were paid for sex with men. The society in Mumbai also gives more roles to males and from the films it is portrayed that men are supposed to work and provide for women. For this reason, Jamal and his brother had to get into child labour so that they could earn money like other men in the society. Hence, it can be concluded that the degree of masculinity in the society is quite high. Uncertainty and avoidance index describe the nervousness that exists when people in the community are faced by an uncertain situation.
The film represents a society that is faced by anxiety in uncertain conditions, for instance when there was a war between the Muslims and the Indians people were seen to run away in fear of being caught between the war. It was this time that Jamal’s mother was killed by the rebels. Jamal and his brother flee away in search of protection and safety. The level of anxiety in uncertain situations is also depicted when Jamal was held under the custody of police. He underwent torture and was not certain whether he could be released from jail. Long term orientation represents how seriously the community rates long living traditions as opposed to the short term. In this context, the Indians are shown to hold considerable value in the long term traditions. The family is the basis of the community, and this is verified when Latika met with Jamal, and he was questioning her about her family. In most scenes of the movie, it is portraying the different types of families that exist in Mumbai. The movie also shows that parents and men are accorded more power than youths and women. From the movie, there have been scenes which represent the cultural identity of the people in the Mumbai slums. For instance when Jamal was participating in the game show, the interview used to refer to him as a chaiwala; this was used in representing the social background of Jamal.
Chaiwalas are people who mainly sell tea on the roadsides in Mumbai, and most of these people are poor. Hence, the use of chaiwala was meant to create an impression to the people that Jamal was a poor young boy from the slums. He had also been employed to serve tea to the workers of a call centre. In another scene, Jamal steals a pair of shoe belonging to some visiting American tourists at the Taj Mahal. This is symbolic that, in the slums of Mumbai, many people do not wear shoes due to their poverty conditions. For this reason, people wearing shoes are viewed as richer than the slum dwellers and so they are placed in a higher social class of the society. Cultural bias has been highly depicted in the movie where people are judged due to certain beliefs that people hold in their culture. For instance, when Jamal was arrested for allegations that he had cheated in a game, the police could not believe that he had not committed the offence. This is due to the fact that they judged him with reference to his place of origin. They presumed that the slums would have made him a criminal. This is the perception that people hold for the slum dwellers in the country as it is represented in the film.
The concept of cultural patterns refers to the cultural inclinations that run through the culture and therefore, they can be used in various interactions between the different cultural groups (Laroche, 2003). Cultural patterns can assist someone in knowing the social values of a certain group of people. This happens when someone is not informed with the customs of a given culture. These cultural patterns are represented in different ways, which include; levels of individualism in the society, power and distance amongst the society members, direct and indirect communication skills used by the society or form of non-verbal communications. The movie portrays cultural patterns where there are low levels of individualism as people are seen to live harmoniously together; thus there are features of communism within the society. Other cultural patterns symbolized in the film are; the relationships, the roles and the respect accorded between the male and females in the society. The Mumbai community pegs high respect to the male persons and they are also given the role of providing to their families. Women are seen as housewives and in extreme poor conditions where women are single they are lured into prostitution within the city.
In this society, there is also a pattern where there exists a wide gap between the poor and the rich such that they are evidently shown to have different dimensions of life. The man that had employed Salim was a wealthy man who lived in a big house as compared to the poor people living in slum shanties. This represents the significant differences that exist between the people in this society where we have the rich and the poor. The film has used both verbal and non-verbal intercultural communication in a way to enhance understanding in different social patterns. For instance, it is shown that when Jamal and his brother move from the slum to the Taj Mahal where we have tourists from other countries. The boys switch into speaking English in order to have an understanding with the tourists who are people from different cultural diversities. Consequently, in another scene of the film, child beggars are shown to use a lot of nonverbal communications in attracting people to give them money. For instance, they could point the mouth to symbolize that they are hungry and thus in need of money to get food. These intercultural communication forms relate to the communication accommodation theory where people communicate using adjusted speech and patterns to accommodate others (Samovar, 2003).
References
Laroche, L. (2003). Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions, Burlington, MA:
Elsevier Science.
Samovar, L., and Porter, R. (2003) Communication between Cultures, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
