Intercultural Communication in Slumdog Millionaire

NOT A REVIEW

This is a paper I wrote for my communications lecture. It's about intercultural communication in movies and I decided to discuss Slumdog Millionaire. If you haven't seen this movie I would highly recommend, it's a really great film I just recently watched it for the first time before writing this paper, I would have seen it sooner had I known how good it would be. I didn't go out to see a movie this past week because I am a broke college student so this is all I got, here's my academic paper for this class if you'd like to read it:

Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle, follows the story of 18 year-old Jamal Malik. Jamal grew up impoverished in modern day India. Him and his brother, Salim, do their best to survive on the streets of Mumbai. From a young age he is wrapped up in gangs, he is caught scamming, stealing, and doing whatever he can to live another day. The plot starts when Jamal finds himself on a popular television program, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. This show asks a series of trivia questions for money, the questions get harder each time, and the amount of money given out increases. Jamal is one of the first players to make it to the end and there’s suspicion on how he’s able to do it. He’s taken into custody, tortured and questioned by the authorities. Here we see flashbacks of his life, the answers to the questions are revealed through different traumas and experiences he faced as a boy growing up in the situation he was in. Throughout the movie there is romantic tension between Jamal and a female character Latika. Latika is also gang affiliated and their romantic tension leads to other conflicts throughout the film. He deals with many difficulties through his life and a number of them revolve around intercultural communications. I will touch base on the usage of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and discrimination in the context of this movie. 

Power distance is the difference between social classes. We see power distance everywhere throughout the movie, the most telling example is the difference between the children living in the slums, and the gangs that take over and run the area. Comparing Jamal and his brother Salim to the gangs it is shown that one of these groups is independent and the other is interdependent. Independence is when a person, or small group is self reliant, competitive, values personal achievements and identity, and is self assertive. Jamal and Salim are incredibly independent children, and they need to be in order to survive. Even getting wrapped up in gangs, they use these resources for their own selfish needs. This gang they’re “working” for as children requires them to sing songs to get money on the streets. Salim is a star child in a sense, he’s the one that runs the other children and helps the older men do their “job”. Salim knows that when these innocent boys go up to sing, they get blinded by the gang members (blind singers make more money). Knowing this, he uses his brother to manipulate the adults. Jamal is able to talk to head honcho into giving him fifty rupees, once he’s finished his task Salim is ordered to blind him. Instead, he throws the chemicals into the faces of the older men and orders his brother to run. The boys are able to escape the wrath of the gang, they run away via train and begin working for themselves. After escaping Jamal and Salim live completely on their own, going day to day coming up with new ideas to make money. In a sense they do rely on each other, but the two of them together are independent from the rest of society. They do their own thing, they compete with each other and with the people around them, doing illegal things to pay for their next meal. They’re self assertive, they know what they want and how to get it, they don’t let anything hold them back from success. The gang on the other hand is interdependent. A group is interdependent when they rely on each other, cooperate, identify with each other as something more than individuals, and value achieving goals together. Gangs very much fit into this category as portrayed by the movie. This gang does everything that it does in order to satisfy it’s wants and needs as a group. There is one person in charge, yes, but the power between everyone else is distributed evenly, they all work together for the same goal and they wouldn’t be as successful without each other to lean on. There’s power distance between the two boys and the men who run the slums, the gang members being very much in charge and the children being enslaved to an extent. The brothers are able to break free from their struggle and start their own lives in a different place, breaking that distance between them and the people in power. In the end the brothers become their own subculture, not abiding by the rules of civilized society and instead living by their own laws.

Uncertainty avoidance is the way cultures handle change, the way they deal with the anxiety of uncertainty. There is so much uncertainty throughout the film especially when Jamal and Salim are dealing with living on the streets at such a young age. They don’t know where they’re going to sleep at night, they don’t know how they’re going to pay for their next meal, they don’t know if they’re going to get caught by the authorities or if they’ll even live to see another day. No matter what life throws at them, these boys have an incredibly way of dealing with their problems, they’re natural problem solvers. They always have a plan in place to cope with what life may throw at them, they even have a back up plan for when their original idea gets shut down. Even as they grow older that skill stuck with them, it’s especially seen in Jamal. In one instance he is trying to find his long lost love, Latika. Latika is now associated romantically with the leader of a large gang, he finds out where she is living, is also finds out a way to get into her house. He uses his wit to get by security, Jamal tells the man that he is the new cook for the home. The man is skeptical, calls his boss and shuts Jamal down, “There is no new cook… only a dishwasher” the guard announces. Jamal retorts, “That’s what I meant, I’m the new dishwasher” he miraculously makes his way into the humble abode and reunites with the girl that he loves. He knows that he’s getting himself into a dangerous situation, especially in dealing with gangs, but eases his anxiety with the confidence he has in his ability to get out of situations. Jamal has gained enough experience living on the streets all of his life to be able to handle any kind of situation that life throws at him which leads to the conclusion he is low in uncertainty avoidance. Being low in uncertainty avoidance gives him the ability to feel comfortable when he gets thrown into unstructured situations and impromptu environments. 

Discrimination is dislike that one has towards a specific group, and this group is targeted with acts of verbal or physical abuse. There is plenty of discrimination to go around in this movie. One incredibly power instance of religious discrimination in this film is a scene in which an entire town is attacked for being muslim. This is where Jamal and Salim lose their mother and become orphaned, this is the beginning of their story of struggle. “They’re muslims, get them!” Men with weapons charge the town, screaming violently and swinging at anyone and everyone. They set homes on fire, they attack women and children, they are killing loads of people for no reason other than religion. There is nothing the muslim citizens of this town can do, there is no words they can say to stop the violence.There is no reason for this angry group to have a predisposition of hatred towards muslims, they just do, they have this prejudice and discrimination already previously engrained in their minds. Another, less severe instance of discrimination is the suspicion Jamal receives for making it to the last round of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The host of the television show thinks that there is no way a slum dog has the intelligence to make it this far. He exclaims the fact that “not even doctors and lawyers get past sixteen thousand rupees” so how is is that this boy is about to win twenty million… Jamal is discriminated against, it is believed he’s a fraud, he’s a lying cheater, when in fact he’s just got lucky and has known the answers to all of the questions because of the experiences he went through as a struggling child. People look down on specific groups of people for nothing else than stereotypes. A stereotype is a fixed opinion or preconception about someone, none of which is based on factual information. In both of these instances, though one more detrimental than the other, these groups are being targeted for nothing other than biased opinions. These people are judged before they’re even gotten to be known. Innocent people are killed before they are even able to explain themselves or make themselves understood. Jamal is tortured before he’s even able to tell his story and explain how he knows all the things that he does. Discrimination is something negative which should be avoided at all costs. You shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. You never truly know someone because of what they may look like or what religion they might be. You must actually sit and talk with someone to understand and know their true character, don’t fall into stereotypes. 

Not only is Slumdog Millionaire an entertaining, cinematic masterpiece, we can also take a lot from it in the context of intercultural communication. The conflicts of this movie base themselves around issues such as discrimination, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. All of these concepts are important to understand in order to fully get the idea of the film itself. This is a great movie with a deeper message than a teen boy winning twenty million rupees. It shows that you shouldn’t be discriminatory, that it’s not right. It portrays how low uncertainty avoidance cultures adapt with their surroundings and this can be inspiring and useful. It also helps the viewer to understand more about the power distance between different social classes and how it works within not just subcultures of society but on a larger scale. All in all, this was a great movie to be watched not only for entertainment purposes but educationally as well.