The Effects of Globalization: The Struggle

Cynthia Moreno
English 495 ESM
Professor Wexler
5 May 2010

At first glance, Slumdog Millionaire seems to be a film that only documents the life and hardships of one Mumbai orphan. The director takes the viewer through the orphans’ memories to show how he has lived prior to winning millions on a game show. The film’s scenes and images provide a greater social commentary on the negative effects of globalization on the east. The film provides an accurate depiction of how globalization plays a big part in poverty, corruption, and the struggle to achieve a westernized lifestyle in India. According to Simon Gikandi’s essay, “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality,” he believes that globalization is “concerned with explaining forms of social and cultural organization whose ambition is to transcend the boundaries of the nation-state.” The western culture transcends into the lives of Indians and breaks the confines of the nation-state of India and this transition can be seen as negative effect.

In the first scene, Jamal wakes up and gets ready in his pressed slacks and long sleeve-collared shirt, he walks through his neighborhood and he is like a sore thumb. He stands out against the shambled community he walks through on his way to work. When Jamal becomes an adult, he finds work in a call center working for little money for an American company that has outsource their labor. Mumbai is the largest city in India, and home to several western corporations, like call centers. The call center that Jamal works for is molding him to assimilate to western culture, by teaching him what in “hot” in UK media. This in turn has caused Jamal and many other Indians like him to view western culture as a better way of living, almost rejecting their impoverished communities. Many times, the main form of income for many families is working at the local western company center and the locals have to learn English and adapt to the western culture in order to work there.

But it is difficult for the Jamal to achieve this westernized lifestyle on his own, being an honest citizen; he does not look to corruption to help him become wealthy like other characters in the film. Instead he lands the opportunity to be on a perversion of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Game Show. The show is originally an American game show, but in the film, India has created their own version, enlisting a corrupt host to antagonize him behind the scene. The show is too good to be true, especially with such a desolated image of an impoverished Mumbai as the setting. Jamal has a global dream of prosperity and surely he did not know he would actually win, but he would have never imagined that he would be treated so poorly and accused of cheating. In Gikandi’s essay, he talks about two stowaways and how “their quest was for modern life in the European sense of the world; their risky journey from Africa was an attempt to escape both poverty and alterity; it was predicted on the belief that their salvation could only come from that Europe which, only two generations earlier, black nationalists had declared to be the major threat to the prosperity and well-being of Africa,” (Gikandi 630-631). For Africans, the pursuit of a “better life” in Europe poses a threat on the perception of Africa and it is the direct result of globalization. The same can be said for India, Jamal’s pursuit for a better life only comes through the possibility of winning an American game show. Wealth is in the hands of only a few people in India and this causes people to turn to corruption to gain wealth. Jamal’s brother turned to corruption to gain status and wealth in his society and he is only one of many people who do the same. Globalization in other countries has caused it’s people to have false sense of what is ideal because they are basing what they want for their lives on Europeans and/or Americans.

In Fernando Coronil’s essay, “Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations on Capitalism's Nature,” Coronil states that “the gap between rich and poor nations--as well as between the rich and the poor--is widening everywhere, global wealth is concentrating in fewer hands, and these few include those of subaltern elites. In this reconfigured global landscape, the "rich" cannot be identified exclusively with metropolitan nations; nor can the "poor" be identified exclusively with the Third and Second Worlds.” In Slumdog Millionaire, it is apparent how the wealth has concentrated into the hands of the few because the majority of scenes depict the poverty present in Mumbai. The scene where the Jamal and his brother are roaming the garbage land looking for anything they can use, one can see that the children are not the only one’s in the area. There are adults rummaging through the garbage as well; if people must subject themselves to such rummaging it is apparent that there is not much opportunity make money. Throughout the film, wealth is seen in the hands of people who are corrupt and engage in illegal activity. The landscape of Mumbai in the film is desolate and one can see that it is a poor city, even though it is a major city in India. Globalization in Mumbai has caused wealth to continue to accumulate in fewer and fewer hands, thus this has been a negative effect for India.

Slumdogg Millionaire is not only a film about Jamal and his life; it is also an exhibition on how globalization has affected Mumbai, India. Globalization is a villain against the belief that eastern countries can be prosperous and in turn it causes the continuation of poverty, corruption, and the struggle to have a western lifestyle. As wealth continues to increase in the hands of the rich, the poor will continue to turn to corruption and struggle to have the ideal western lifestyle.



Works Cited

Coronil, Fernando. "Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculation on Capitalism's Nature." Public Culture 12.2 (2000): 358. JSTOR. Web. 3 May 2010.

Gikandi, Simon. "The South Atlantic Quarterly." Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality 100.3 (2001): 627-58. Print.