Far from Bollywood, the film Millionaire slumdog Plunges us in the heart of the slum planet without pouring into miserabilism. Igor Martinache offers us a sociological reading.
The film opens in a Bombay police station. A young man in his twenties undergoes an interrogation “ muscle From two raw police officers. His crime ? Having won the television game “ Who wants to be a millionaire ? “, The local version of our” Who wants to win millions ? Or more exactly, having won while it is only a poor tea server in a telephone call center from Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia (over a million inhabitants). Because Jamal Malik (Dev Pratel) has infallibly answer all the questions allowing him to pocket ten million rupees, when the “ University professors stop at 16,000 rupees As one of the agents remarks. Then the young man, as soon as he was recovered from the Gégène session, will work to tell his life to the police to prove to them that he did not cheat. Because each question asked him corresponded to an episode rich in emotions of his short but hectic existence. In an assembly in the blink of an eye to Suspects Usualwe therefore follow the trajectory of this child of the slums and his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal).
Improvated cricket parts on the tarmac of the airport with the deadly raids of Hindu extremists against the Muslim slums, passing by the false benefactors who do not hesitate to mutilate the orphans they collect to exploit their Mendicity and the other violent activities of the “ medium Mafieux, we are far from India from Bollywood films. The good feelings and other somewhat moralizing shots are certainly not completely spared from us, but we nevertheless let ourselves be easily taken by this dive into the “ slum planet »Well depicted by Mike Davis. Like the works of the unclassifiable researcher, the film by Dany Boyle, author among others of the cult film Trainspotting (1996) and Loveleen Tandanadapted from the novel by Vikas Swarup, shows the weight of economic structures in the manifestations of social disorganization and the various deviant careers that children born in the shade of waste can endorse that secretes the “ ill-development »Of our societies. On the cinematographic side, the Odyssey of Jamal Malik thus irresistibly thinks of the hero of the city of God of Fernando Meirelles (2003), whose title takes up the ironic name of one of the favelas of Rio, but also closer to us Gypsies’ time of Emir Kusturica (1989) or Khamsa of Karim Dridi (2008), which allow us to a certain point to adopt the children’s point of view belonging to the groups that the politically correct designates as “ traveler ». They have in common with the slums of the slums to be the subject of a stigma whose recent Italian news unfortunately reminds us that it is not weakening. Class contempt is reflected here in particular by the recurring jokes of the Jean-Pierre Foucault Local towards Jamal, a sort of symbolic violence which acts as a double-pear coming to redouble the misfortunes of birth.
Like the other cities, the film does not pour into miserability. Far from determinism is the cross journey of the two Malik brothers, but also and above all, the film is far from a certain reading of the cultural distinction, which would like to characterize the life of the popular classes by lack of all points of view, compared to that of the dominant classes ; And either it does not fall into the symmetrical pitfall of populism. Here, Dany Boyle shows us that life experiences make it possible to accumulate other forms of “ capital »Very profitable in certain fields, and in particular a number of« knowledge Who can allow in this case to win in a television game. In short, he reminds us that the “ poor culture Is not only a culture of deprivation, but another culture.
The television game here put into abyme is itself an object of fruitful sociological questioning. Rather than engaging in their praise or denunciation, one can wonder about the reasons for their success. A key is given to us here by the beautiful Latika (Freida Pinto), when she says that “ that (him) allows to dream ». We also note that many of the games we distract here are in fact only the declination of concepts born very often across the Atlantic, and which we find around the world. Again, before depliating a “ globalization Synonymous with cultural homogenization, it is a question of identifying the mixing processes at work. These go through the necessary adaptation to the local context, but also and above all by the fact that, far from absorbing images like “ sponing brain “, Publics most often adopt a” oblique reading (As Richard Hoggarth says), and do not attribute the same meaning to the same images according to their different cultural luggage. This is what the so -called studies have been established “ receipt “Led by researchers belonging to the current of Cultural Studies for thirty years. David Morley, for example, highlighted how the spectators of the information program Nationwide perceived the reports of this in a very different way depending on their profession, while Ien Ang showed how the Dallas series could be perceived as an apology for “ American dream Or the illustration of the decadence of the American society according to the country. It is that, as Stuart Hall explained in a famous article, there is rarely an absolute correspondence between the system of meanings with which producers invest their program and that with which the public “ decree ».
In short, it is difficult to know how each of you will perceive Millionaire slumdog. Let’s just hope you will have great pleasure. But also, that, without taking a necessarily aesthetic vision at the foot of the letter, he will make a point of view “ understanding On certain forms of juvenile deviance. Because despite the cinematographic arguments and the sociological demonstrations that accumulate, it is not easy for everyone that social policies are much more effective than repression to fight against violence. The society that repressive policies and the “ situational prevention -whose residential segregation is ultimately only one of the options-is illustrated by the recent feature film by Rodrigo Pla, unfortunately gone too unnoticed, The zona. Private property (2007), which shows by exaggeration the treatment that the inhabitants of a “ Gated Community »Mexican reserve for young intruders from the adjacent favela.
Photo credit: Ishika Mohan