After recently watching the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ I was able to make several connections pertaining to cross cultural education. Not until I watched the movie this time, did I pay close attention to the details and realize that false assumptions and first impressions play a major role in the making of this movie.
Slumdog Millionaire is based off of the show ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” In the movie, however, there is a contestant on the Indian version of the show. Unfortunately, before the contestants shot at the $20,000,000 question, he is interrogated by police, who have a feeling that he is cheating because they think that a “slumdog” like him couldn’t possibly know the answers, hence the title “Slumdog Millionaire.” Just as we learned in the cross cultural class this past semester, many people base their first impressions of someone solely on what they look like on the outside and where they are from, rather than actually getting to know the person before they can make any judgments about that particular person.
Although the contestant seemed to know just about all the answers with little hesitation, many people do not realize that he is answering these questions through flashbacks of incidents of his life which seemed to somehow help him in finding the correct answers. Some of these flashbacks include dealing with the death of his mother, becoming a beggar, travelling on top of trains, selling goods, picking pockets, and even working as dishwashers. When the contestant is actually on the show, and uses his ‘phone a friend’ lifeline to talk to Kumar, he is indecisive about whether to go with his instinct or to go with his friend’s thought. After much thought, the contestant decided to go with his initial instinct, and he ended up getting the question right, which made the police suspect he was cheating. Once again, this is the police’s initial instincts, not letting the contestant have the opportunity to explain himself for who he actually is.
Through many of the different class discussions that had to be completed online, we were given the opportunity to share our opinions, as well as read other students’ opinions relating to certain topics. Many students believed that assumptions play a huge role in cross cultural education, and that it is not right to judge someone based off of appearances. It is important to meet the person and get to know them before forming opinions, which in this case, the police did not do in terms of the contestant on the show. I thought it was a good idea to partake in class discussions so that students were given the opportunity to read other students’ opinions on certain topics, as well as voice their own opinions. Before taking this class, I had never actually thought in depth about several of the topics, and some of them really got me thinking. Before taking the class, I, as well as other students will probably admit, found myself making judgments or assumptions sometimes, without getting to know the person. This is just part of being a human, though. Everyone does it, and unfortunately there is nothing one can do about it.
I was able to somewhat understand what the contestant was going through when I traveled to Spain in high school with other students and my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Chenkus. When we were in Spain, I felt as if myself, along with everyone else in the group were being judeged or looked at because of what we were wearing or how we were acting. It was easy to tell that we were tourists, but we found at some places that we were not given the opportunity to explain where we were from or what we were doing there. At some places, I found myself overwhelmed because I felt as if I was not being welcomed. However, there were other destinations in which I found the complete opposite, and felt as if everyone was very nice and welcoming towards me. I suppose it is about what parts of the world you visit, as different countries or cities tend to be populated with different types of people. I think it is important to be able to explain who you actually are before you are looked at or talked about, just as the contestant in the movie should have been given the opportunity to do as well.
Another connection I was able to make after watching “Slumdog Millionaire” was that the movie was about the separation of rich and poor. Although the contestant was from a poor family and grew up having to go through a great amount of trouble, one would have never been able to know this had they seen his presence and responses to most of the answers. For the contestant, money was never an option for him, and unfortunately this is the dividing factor between the rich and the poor. This is extremely sad to realize because in reality, very rich people do not tend to associate with very poor people. Poor people have the hardest lives, and it is not fair because they are people as well. Although there are many rich people who like to help other people and share their wealth with those less fortunate people, there are also many rich people who like to flaunt their money and purchase unnecessary material items. This idea was clearly seen in the movie when the contestant kept having constant flashbacks when he was on the show. “Slumdog Millionaire” presents money as something of high value and a symbol of wealth in comparison to the symbols representing poverty.
After watching this movie again, I was glad I had come out with more opinions about the movie as it pertained to assumptions and first impressions. It was interesting to see how the movie relates to cross cultural and intercultural education. Just because of the contestant’s past experiences, does not mean that he does not have the knowledge to succeed on a game show. “Slumdog Millionaire” is a very inspirational movie in this aspect, in that first impressions are usually entirely false and do not explain the truth about any human being.