Slumdog Millionaire Connection

Slumdog Millionaire Connection

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.

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.