Slumdog Millionaire

            The world was aflutter with talk of a new movie, Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle. This movie, which was released in 2008 in the United States, was instantly a hit. It focuses on the protagonist, Jamal Malik, and how he came to be on the show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and his amazing life story in the slums of Mumbai. While the story is generally acknowledged to be a story of an underdog’s rise to fame and fortune, and a love lost and found again, another perspective could be applied to this story.

            Globalization is a readily apparent theme in Slumdog Millionaire, with its focus on the American television show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Globalization is, simply, a “geographical concept, and it means global integration” (CITATION:645).  Yet the foundation of globalization, the thing that pushes and drives globalization is capital. “Globalization, above all, is the global and unitary operation of capital” (CITE:645).  To understand globalization, we must understand capital. At this point in time, capitalism rules the world and has gone global. Karl Marx was one of the few people who theorized the idea of globalization well ahead of his time, as well as the inherent contradiction of capitalism. “He [Marx] understood that "the need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe, ‘foreseeing that the development of capitalism would inevitably be "paving the way for more extensive and exhaustive crises.’ Marx identified how disastrous speculation could trigger and exacerbate crises in the whole economy” (Panitch). Marx predicted with some accuracy, the extent of the global economic crisis we are finding ourselves in now. The article by Leo Panitch outlines the current economic crisis in terms of the newfound interest in Marx’s philosophies.

Slumdog Millionaire is a prime example of the economic crisis the world is currently in, on a national level, and of the unequal distribution of wealth between the upper class gangsters and the slumdogs.

            The disparity of the slums is made apparent from the introducing scene of the movie, where Jamal and his brother Samir run through the slums to escape a police officer chasing them. The vast system that makes up the slums is juxtaposed later with the houses and cars of the gangsters, especially Javed. This primary gangster lives in a western-style house with many working for him. The characters in Slumdog almost perfectly shows a comparison between the many versus the few; the two wealthy gangsters versus all the people living in the slums.

            The way Samir goes to work for Javed is an example of a product of cultural globalization. People can see the standard of life that is being presented to them, and want to raise themselves to a higher standard of living. Samir has nothing to lose by going to work for Javed and everything to gain, monetarily speaking. By the end of the movie, he is one of Javed’s most trusted men—he is rewarded accordingly and dies in a bathtub full of money, with a gold chain around his neck. Even when he was younger, Samir took advantage of any opportunity to make money. He charges men to use the bathroom, sells his brother’s autographed picture, and helps Maman, another gangster, force children to beg in the streets for money.

This idea of raising one’s standard of living is also the reason I think everyone, Americans included, are so enthralled by the American television show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Jamal asks Latika at one point why people watch the show, and Latika says it gives people a way out their lives for a short while. It gives them hope for a better life, if they could answer the questions correctly and earn all that money (capital again). Of course, capitalism requires a large base of workers who are exploited for the monetary gain of the few, so the way Samir becomes wealthy seems about right; doing the dirty work of a CEO and becoming the trusted underling. There is no other way of lifting yourself up other than those two means: lift yourself up by any means necessary under a powerful CEO-type, or win twenty million rupees on a television show.

The movie focuses more on the love story between the two main characters, rather than a commentary on capitalism and globalization, however I believe it is a good representation of capitalism’s inherent contradictions. The workers must be paid in order to buy the products they are producing, and when that doesn’t happen, new markets and new consumers must be found for those products. Thus we get the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and a vast chasm between those who constitute the few ‘extremely wealthy’ of the world, and the millions upon millions of ‘slumdogs.’ 

Works Cited

Ouyang, Kang, and Yumei Liu, Lingling Zhu. “Globalization and the Contemporary Development of Marxist Philosophy: Precondition, Problem Domain and Research Outline. Frontiers of Philosophy in China

Vol. 1, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 643-657. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30209880

Panitch, Leo. "Thoroughly Modern Marx." Foreign Policy No. 172 (May/June 2009) P. 140-5, 172 (2009): 140-145.

Globalization

I have lately been railing against the idea of settling down in a suburban community with a white picket fence and a mortgage, because I hate the idea of being trapped into that kind of life. It's interesting that our discussions of globalization leads us to capitalism and ultimately to how the machine functions. My favorite quote from this discussion was, of course, about the suburbs.
" After the World War, we needed a place for all the GI's to live, so the suburbs became popular, which was great, now the GI's have somewhere to live, yay. More importantly, the suburbs created a new market for capitalism to exploit."
We were also talking about the way the United States compensated for the low wages of the workers. Once the workers wages were being limited, they couldn't afford to buy the products they were producing, so the US became a debt society. Thus the enslavement of people to their credit cards and their debt, and now we get to things like this debt crisis we're in now and David Harvey's insight.

Collaborative Media Literacy Group Workshop

What we ultimately decided to do for our project was to analyze things like tone in all different types of media. We want to use topological analysis to help students analyze the stimuli they see everyday. From texts read in class, to videos seen on youtube, advertisements, pieces of art, etc. They all want to convey different emotions or illicit different emotions in you as you view them. We want to show students how these things work, and point out differences and similarities in the forms of media and how they affect you, are more effective and/or less effective.

New Media in the Classroom

Do's and Don'ts for Media in the Classroom

In our Collaborative Media Literacy group we're discussing how to use media to teach a subject, like English or Physics. This, of course, is the hot topic amongst teachers; how do we incorporate new media into the classroom, as so many of our students are so well versed in how to use media. It keeps them engaged and interested in the learning process as it evolves with them. My interest in education is to keep it as real as possible; use it to shed light on the world around students, as it is ever changing and evolving. We have to keep using technology and including it in the classroom, but at the same time we shouldn't just be filling their heads with facts, we should be teaching them how to process the stimuli they're receiving everyday.

Myth Today

I wonder how myth is faring today. We've been discussing myth in class for awhile and all of them just seem like fairytales nowadays. Most I've never even heard of. What about myths people still believe today? Most of us believe that myths are inherently false, but some of us still believe myths today. Catholics, for example, theoretically believe the Holy Bible in its entirety is a completely true account of what has happened in the world. Of course, most probably have doubts as to the validity of the text.
What role do myths play in our world today?
Mythbusters and Video Games seem to be the only places we see myth in contemporary society.

Myth Today

Reading Myths

We've been reading more myths, and they are fascinating. One of the things that I was considering while reading these myths is how they sometimes share characteristics. For example, I posted the video of the opening of the Hogfather, which has a world that lies on the back of a turtle. This reminded me very much of the Iroquis creation myth, where the world is created on the back of a turtle floating in a sea. They are not the same myth, but share the idea of the world on the back of an animal, in this case a turtle. 

We were also assigned to read a myth about Pele and her sisters and I was really excited about that because, of course I'm Hawaiian, and also because Pele is such a popular figure in Hawaiian mythology. She was able to withstand the onslaught of Christian missionaries to the Hawaiian islands, even after the ancestral religion was abolished. Female Divine, indeed.

Myths

We're beginning our descent into World Myths, and I was lucky enough to get my first choice of the Creation Myths. Of course media plays a huge part in all of our lives, so my first thought when I got Creation Myths was: The Hogfather (a TV movie).

Poetry

Ohh Poetry. So our class was asked to write two original poems and post them on their blogs. We read them in class today (some of us) and I am amazed at the creativity of some of my fellow students. In particular, Megan's poem and Cherie's poems stuck in my mind. Megan's was very deep, had symbolism, alliteration, and other poetic conventions. Cherie's poems were different, but full of raw emotion and shared a lot with the class. I thought that was very brave of her to put herself out there. I think poetry is one of the ways a lot can be said or inferred, and it's very powerful. It is a very strong representation of one's self. There are so many new and exciting ways to express yourself, could they all be considered a kind of poetry?

"If you limit language, you limit self."

Poetry

Attack

The sun is shining.

        Everything is clear and bright.

Panic

       Fear

                    You are paralyzed.

Your breath is stopped dead in your lungs.

                        Someone is squeezing your chest.

A fiery, sharp pain blooms where it shouldn’t:

            Your heart.

                        You must take a breath

            but you can’t.

Like drowning—

Seeing the surface

              but not touching it.

You know this is fatal.

            Like falling

only you can’t catch yourself.

       You cannot move.

The electrical wiring in your brain

            has been shocked.

You can’t think anymore

                    but one sentence.

You must take a breath.

But you can’t.

Suffocation

Your heart begins to throb

That slow throb of tired muscles

That can do no more.

Stranger

I remember wondering daily

Why you never came.

I remember getting letters

with nothing but a name.

I remember for my birthday

A stuffed animal best friend—

One thing I can’t remember

is hearing your laughter never end.

I remember that one morning

A postcard came from you.

It said “missing you this day,”

signed by a man I never knew.

I remember never feeling

A father’s loving embrace

Or seeing an endearing smile

On an old, familiar face.

I remember feeling hatred

For a man who never knew me

Because while you expected love

You just could not see:

I never learned to feel for you

From a father’s loving embrace,

So all I have is an unsteady smile

For your unfamiliar face.

Lyric poetry

When asked to think of a song that juxtaposes lyrics with the tone and beat of the melody, I immediately thought of Lily Allen's "Fuck You (Very Much)." The lyrics are very adult, politically charged, and obviously includes words not suggested for children.

So you say
It's not okay to be gay
Well I think you're just evil
You're just some racist
who can't tie my laces
Your point of view is medieval

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please don't stay in touch

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause your words don't translate
And it's getting quite late
So please don't stay in touch

Do you get
Do you get a little kick out of being slow minded?
You want to be like your father
It's approval you're after
Well that's not how you find it

Do you
Do you really enjoy living a life that's so hateful?
Cause there's a hole where your soul should be
Your losing control of it and it's really distasteful


Just a taste of the lyrics provided by Lily Allen. The music we'd expect to go with this is not at all what we get. Something a mix of sugary-sweet pop beats and an opening that reminds us of the Carpenters...




The question that this analysis raises is about lyric poetry. Is it becoming a new genre? In another class there was a group of future teachers that used lyrics as a genre of poetry in their hypothetical classroom. More and more teachers are using lyrics as a way to connect to their students and make poetry more contemporary.

Meaning in the Eye of the Beholder

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1922 and it was published in 1923. His favorite poem that he himself had written, he regarded it as his best chance at remembrance and as his best and final statement. Having heard much speculation on what his poem was about, Frost outright dismissed the idea that his poem was about death. Theoretically whether you believe it is or not would go back to the critical theories of literature—who defines the text, the reader or the author? Ultimately it is both.

One of the most read poems in the world, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, is an American literary classic. With so many different perspectives people have many different interpretations of what the poem really means. Some see the poem as a nod to nature; others see it as a wish for death. The meaning behind Frost’s poem is somewhere in between—not a wish for death, and not simply capturing the beauty of a winter’s day. Frost uses his poem as a commentary on a compromise between human nature and nature.

The poem is written using the Rubaiyat stanza; the rhyming scheme being:

a a b a / b b c b / c c d c/ d d d d. The four stanzas are all composed in iambic tetrameter. These aspects create a very peaceful cadence in the work which lends to the overall tone and feeling being expressed. The author’s word choices also relay the idea of a peaceful calm, using words such as “frozen” “darkest” and phrases such as “easy wind and downy flake. (Frost 7,8,12)” The poem has very evident Romantic characteristics, such as its focus on nature and the woods, and the solitude of the speaker of the poem.

There are two specific interpretations of this poem that people tend to lean towards first. The first of these is the belief that Frost is simply praising nature; sort of a nod to transcendentalist writers before him like Thoreau or Emerson. The second, which is far more controversial, is that the speaker is tantalized by the idea of death while out in the woods by himself. Admittedly, the poem is dark and has vocabulary that suggests a sort of longing for a ‘frozen peace.’ When first reading the poem, this explanation seems the most logical. Instead of using the word “longest” the author uses the word “darkest” to refer to December 21. Using the word “frozen” in itself has its own connotation, coupled with the tone of the poem—almost as if suggesting a corpse. The most persuasive part of the poem for this interpretation is the last stanza, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep/ But I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep/ And miles to go before I sleep. (Frost 13-16)” The stanza suggests the idea that something dark and deep would be lovely—it plays on the connection the reader automatically makes between ‘eternal sleep’ and the adjectives ‘dark and deep.’ In this interpretation the speaker turns away, thinking of the promises he has to keep to others or to himself; either way the obligations he must fulfill before he ‘sleeps’—or dies.

My first interpretation of Frost’s poem centered around thoughts of death and suicide as well, as they are so easily discernable, however ultimately I have come to the conclusion that Frost’s poem is not about death but instead about the nature of man.  The first point which makes me consider an alternate interpretation is the fact that “Mr. Frost himself at a public lecture pooh-pooh[ed] the death-wish interpretation. (Armstrong 440)” Of course, as Mr. Armstrong points out, we do not have to take Mr. Frost’s input as the final word since there are many reasons authors do not acknowledge the presence of meanings in their work. Yet Mr. Frost’s denial does suggest there may be an alternate reading. Looking at the poem again, I wondered at the presence of the horse and the speaker’s preoccupation with the solitude nature could provide. At first, my initial response to the lines “He will not see me stopping here/ to watch his woods fill up with snow” (3-4) was that the speaker was alone. Within the context of the poem and the fact that the speaker believes the woods are “lovely, dark and deep” it could be a commentary on Man vs. Nature. The man who owns the land owns a town in a village, and cannot see the beautiful sight of his woods filling with snow. The speaker could be pointing out the lack of appreciation for nature instead of contemplating death. I would agree the speaker is tired and fed up with something, but not life—instead it’s the demands of society, the conformity and obligation required of him. The horse, inexplicable in the death-wish interpretation, seems to function in two ways. First, the horse is a product of nature which seems to be at odds with human nature, shown by the horse’s domestication. Second, the horse serves as a sort of middle ground between the speaker and nature as the horse is both part of nature and part of society. It is a representation of man’s relationship with nature. The end of the poem, rather than being a call back to life, is a call back to society. Nature is beautiful and calming, it doesn’t ask much of us as people; but humans are social creatures and inevitably must be part of a society—and for that there is a price to pay. Obligation, duty, and “promises to keep” are the price we pay for our social nature. The final two lines are repeated; once literally “miles to go” before he sleeps, the second many obligations to fulfill before he is done.

In an interview Mr. Frost said of this poem that “he meant precisely what he said. The critics and professors had been exaggerating the significance of outlines, first drafts, or elaborately revised manuscripts. (O’Donnell 233)” Though Mr. Frost may not have meant his poem to carry all the different meanings and interpretations attributed to it, it nevertheless does now also carry those meanings attributed to it. We cannot, however, assert the idea that the author’s intention doesn’t matter—it is simply another interpretation to add to the pile.

Works Cited

Armstrong, James. "The 'Death Wish' in 'Stopping by Woods'." JSTOR. College English, 25.6 (1964):   440+445. 15 September 2010.

Frost, Robert. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." http://www.ketzle.com/frost/snowyeve.htm. 15 September 2010.

O'Donnell, William. "Talking About Poems with Robert Frost." JSTOR. The Massachusetts Review, 39.2 (1998): 225-249. 15 September 2010.

Media Technology's Role in Teaching

Welcome! This blog is created for my English 495ESM class, Multigenre Literacy in a Global Context.

For this particular post I've been asked to consider what kind of role media technology should play in teaching. As I am a college student, I suppose it's only natural to assess the level I'm most familiar with; the university level. While I've seen some very effective uses of media technology in the classroom, I've also seen many instances where it actually hindered learning. We've all had those experiences where the professor is less than technologically savvy and makes it harder for students by not knowing how to access different types of technology. However, overall I think media technology in the classroom can greatly benefit the student. I don't think the sole focus should be on the media technology, but as a support of the curriculum being taught, I think it's definitely useful. I have had this experience in two of my classes particularly, in both my Critical Theories class with Professor Wexler, and in my Drama in Language Arts class with Professor Dwyer. The Critical Theories class in particular was a favorite of mine not because I happen to have Professor Wexler again, but more because the media examples he utilized were very poignant-- they were the link between the classical literary theories and the modern day student. The use of media technology in that class was a clever way to keep students interested in the theories and apply it to modern texts. Professor Dwyer's class focused more on the use of media technology as a teaching tool in the classroom and showed us various ways to use it. I suppose that's a different situation, since she was demonstrating through her teaching how to use media technology in a classroom. Nevertheless, these classes successfully integrated media technology into their pedagogy and  were more successful for it.