Hello, this The Gemsbok, and today's topic is Slumdog Millionaire,
a film directed by Danny Boyle and originally released in 2008.
The notion of an overarching, providential justice overseeing and directing all human events,
while out of vogue in modern philosophy, remains a huge influence on popular culture.
That this sort of determined or corrective justice acts not just generally across time, but within a
given life, is a particularly attractive thought to the creators of the fictive tales of the film industry.
"CALL IT FATE. CALL IT LUCK. CALL IT KARMA."
The reasons for this are myriad, bringing to both content creators and audiences
an appeasement of their desire to see good things happen to good people; their desire to see
bad things happen to bad people; and their desire to witness miraculous or incredible events.
The 2009 Academy Award winner for Best Picture (and other categories) was Slumdog Millionaire,
a case-in-point of the populace’s penchant for fictionalized treatments of karmic justice,
as directed by British filmmaker Danny Boyle. The shortcomings of the notion
of overarching cosmic justice or providence as an explanation for events on earth can be understood
through the presentation of the concept in Slumdog Millionaire, which unintentionally showcases the
problems with the idea more blatantly than the vast majority of works with similar plotlines.
It occupies this uniquely self-destructive position relative to its themes because it
simultaneously makes more frequent and explicit appeals to benevolent destiny
and fate than most other movies—
"IT'S OUR DESTINY."
while also depicting an unusually dramatic
imbalance between the badness of the detriments visited upon its characters
"THE MAN WITH THE COLT .45 SAYS, 'SHUT UP!'"
and the goodness of the benefits that are obtained as a result.
"INCREDIBLE!"
The nature of this video is such that it
requires spoiling plot details of Slumdog Millionaire, so you should only continue
watching after this section if you either do not mind spoilers or have already seen the film.
Slumdog Millionaire proudly announces its fidelity to fate at regular intervals,
most directly through the repeated and gleefully endorsed motif, “It is written.” To begin,
the worth of this principle can be examined via the central narrative of the film,
as the most obvious and far-reaching application of this concept is the way in which the various
hardships of protagonist Jamal Malik provide him with the answers needed to stay on the quiz show.
Apparently, it was destiny that Jamal would win 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' and subsequently
be reunited with his childhood love, Latika.
"THIS IS OUR DESTINY."
As that end is destined, or, indeed, “written,” anything that leads to it
is justified: Jamal submerging himself in feces, his brother Salim spending a half-decade or more
as a mob hitman, the extensive robbery of both Indian citizens and tourists, Jamal being beaten
and electrocuted by police officers, and a group of Muslims in Mumbai being violently murdered.
Incidents such as that religious genocide of the adults in his hometown and the abduction
of numerous children by a crimelord intent on exploiting and sometimes maiming them provide
Jamal with answers regarding the imagery of a Hindu deity and the name of a poet, respectively.
These are specific examples of Slumdog Millionaire‘s larger project of establishing
the worth of hardship as an eventual attainment of justice. Yet, the idea that negative events are
the nudges of predestination toward a benevolent end is significantly weakened by close attention.
The specific balance of good and bad in the story seems to place an enormous amount of value on the
present above the value of the past, and on the future above that of the present.
The overwhelmingly upbeat tone of the entire climax and ending of the film, sweeping from
Jamal’s victory to his kiss with Latika to the 'Jai Ho' dance number, winks and nods at the audience,
assuring the viewer that they ought pay no more thought to the extensive foregoing list of crimes,
grotesqueries, and atrocities. What are a few murders and maimings here and there,
after all, when they lead to a fated kiss? In the philosophical discussion of the meaning
of life, there is a similar argument to this idea that the ends can always justify the means—that
the ultimate ending of a chain of events provides all of the worth (or lack thereof)
that can be ascribed to each earlier link in that chain. And it’s well worth mentioning here,
because the argument in question is commonly understood to fail for the same reason as the
underlying philosophy of Slumdog Millionaire. While this argument goes by many names,
we may conceivably call it 'The Final Outcome Argument.’ It goes like this:
If nothing we do now will matter in the distant future, life is meaningless. Nothing we do
now will matter in the distant future. Therefore, life is meaningless. That is,
since the final outcome of the planet or even the universe is a state of affairs
where our present activity will not matter, our lives don’t matter and don’t have meaning.
And why do I say that this argument fails? Well, while the argument is deductively valid,
it may be unsound because its first premise may be false; after all, there is no justification
in the argument as to why something being significant at that future point is any more
important than something being significant at any point before that, including the present moment.
As the philosopher Thomas Nagel puts it, “Whether what we do now will matter in a
million years could make the crucial difference only if its mattering in a million years depended
on its mattering, period." Slumdog Millionaire’s conception of providence is a
specific case of this ‘Final Outcome Argument;’ it too places an arbitrarily high value on whether
something matters in the future, over and above any notion of its intrinsic mattering and meaning.
A balanced assessment of the beneficial and detrimental content of a person’s life,
I would contend, must be able to weigh each event within it on a level field.
This is especially relevant in cases where the present worthwhile-ness or goodness of
the consequence (like knowing the symbols associated with the deity)
"A BOW AND ARROW."
seems to be staggeringly outweighed by the badness of the hardship (like the death of
Jamal’s mother in the genocidal attack). Jamal himself proclaims that he would have preferred
to not know the answer to that question.
"WAKE UP EVERY MORNING WISHING I DIDN'T KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION."
But at this point, I haven’t shown that
the philosophy in question is inconsistent, per se, only that it is lopsided, arbitrary,
and unconvincing. To showcase inconsistency, we must move on to our next topic.
"MAYBE IT'S WRITTEN, MY FRIEND."
The providential oversight presented in Slumdog Millionaire is inconsistent because it seemingly
applies only to Jamal and Latika. Other characters lead overwhelmingly negative lives accompanied by
little or no positivity shown in the film—whether by their own actions or by sheer bad luck.
Jamal’s brother, Salim Malik, is, without exaggeration, a gangster,
a murderer, and a rapist. Yet the composition of the film’s climax, with Salim’s sudden change
of heart yielding to a death that is treated as a peaceful moment of praise for a benevolent deity,
"GOD IS GREAT."
implies that his final acts of helping Latika escape and killing the mob boss Javed have
atoned for his long career as a hitman, as well as for all of his other crimes.
Perhaps one may insist that I am repeating the material of the last section by bringing up this
mismatch between Salim’s lifetime of heinous moral wrongdoing and his moment of peaceful redemption.
But in actuality, there’s something more nefarious going on here. After all, this is not a case where
a well-meaning and earnest character is subjected to a lifetime of suffering before being rewarded,
as is the case for Jamal. To some degree, of course, Salim is a victim of circumstance,
and he does act in his sibling’s best interest on at least two occasions. But whatever the reasons,
he is otherwise a despicable monster throughout nearly the entire tale.
"WE CAME BACK TO FIND HER." "YOU DID. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HER."
Still, one may object that Salim only comes to believe that he has been redeemed as he dies,
although he has in fact not been—in much the same hypocritical spirit as earlier in the film,
when he ardently prays for forgiveness for past misdeeds, mere moments before grabbing his gun
to head back to work. Yet the framing of his death does nothing to contradict his assessment,
fading his uncomplicated bliss into the fanfare of the television studio.
[LOUD CHEERING] "WHAT A NIGHT!"
More troubling still is the figure of Arvind. After being taken in by
a mobster named Maman early in the film, Jamal, Salim, Latika,
and a slew of other children are trained to beg for money in a Dickensian criminal orphanage.
"YOU GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO."
To maximize his profits, Maman trains certain children to sing, then purposefully
blinds them to make them be perceived as maximally pathetic to generous passerby.
Jamal escapes this outcome; Arvind does not.
Years later, a now-adolescent Jamal comes across the blinded Arvind,
still singing and begging on behalf of Maman. Arvind points Jamal in the direction of Latika,
and thus ends Arvind’s arc in the film. One wonders whether Arvind would be as
comfortable with the “It is written” mantra as is Jamal during the kiss at the movie’s end.
The benevolence of fate, it would seem, has condemned that child to a life of darkness,
pain, and privation. In the cases of Salim and Arvind,
one witnesses the deep inconsistency of the film’s providential theme: that fate is really only
looking out for Jamal, and, to a lesser extent, for Latika. In the uncomplicated celebration
accompanying its climactic game show victory, Slumdog Millionaire goes so far as to imply that
Jamal’s large cash prize is somehow a victory for impoverished Indians generally, displaying
enormous and effusive public celebrations throughout the country. Ultimately, piles of
human suffering are shoveled into a thematic furnace to fuel Jamal’s climactic moments.
In summary, the philosophy underlying Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire is untenable.
"YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!"
It is unconvincing, because there is no justification provided for why the movie’s
central relationship should be considered an outweighing good in relation to the lost lives
and other atrocities that ultimately secure it—and it is inconsistent, because of the inclusion of
narratives that contradict the alleged beneficence of fate so worshipped throughout the film,
"IT'S YOUR DESTINY."
and especially at its conclusion. This staggering inconsistency could
possibly have been dodged if the work had avoided the tonal mismatch toward its end.
Even the thematic idea that "It is written," which is to say the idea of hard determinism,
is entirely salvageable. There are plenty of professional philosophers working today who
are determinists, or at least compatibilists. If there was some note in the film of loving
fate regardless of what it brings, rather than only when it finally brings rewards,
then its philosophy might have practical real-world applications.
Instead, the film focuses on occasions where lifetimes of horrible suffering yield to some positive outcomes, ignores
alternatives where the same suffering may lead to no positive outcomes, and holds up its few special
cases as general proofs of providential justice.
"MAYBE IT'S WRITTEN, NO?"
The pairing of, on the one hand, gritty and brutal
realism in the majority of the tale with, on the other hand, a string of blissful Hollywood
and Bollywood ending scenes for its three central characters—makes the entire project come across as
thoroughly illogical and unsatisfying, due to its extreme valuation of the future over the present,
the present over the past, and Jamal Malik over the rest of humanity.