主题：【原创】令人震撼的印度贫民窟（多图） -- daharry

Nobody complained when Vikas Swaroop wrote it, nobody batted an eyelid when the film was shot and released internationally. After all, so many films — both features and documentaries — have been made around the subject of poverty in India. The protests started only when Slumdog Millionaire started winning international awards. The unkind way of looking at this is to argue that there is no value in complaining about the obscure — only protests about the famous can become famous.

Does the West have a vested interest in pinning India to its poverty by refusing to acknowledge the progress it has undoubtedly made in the last few years? Is India interesting only because it is poor? Is the gratuitous use of poverty nothing but an exploitative use of someone else's misery for one's diversion?

But if cinematic representations about India are stereotyped, so are those for all countries. Popular cinema uses the currency of stereotypes because it is accessible to all, most particularly to the American audience whose capacity for cultural nuance is limited. So you cannot show Brazil without the carnival (or its slums), Russia without the KGB and/or the mafia and England without Hugh Grant.

The question to ask is if our dominant perception about this New India is in fact the reality. Does the Westerner have to dig out poverty and then amplify it for audiences abroad? In the India of today, any mention of poverty is seen as being faintly treacherous; there exists a tacit conspiracy of silence about the state of the urban majority. By shrivelling the misery of millions into a single word, we banish the slum by giving it a name. We don't make movies about it anymore, except as a prop in a crime thriller. We don't cover it on TV; airport delays attract breathless outrage while nobody would look twice at a story about water scarcity in the slums. More importantly, it as if we have stopped noticing the vast numbers of the urban poor who surround us. We genuinely believe that Mumbai can be summed up by the Taj. So when someone from outside smells Mumbai in all its fetid rottenness, we are appalled. So what if the story told is one of a New Indian, corkscrewing his way out of his circumstances?