Good
evening classmates,
As
before I am posting my first draft in raw format; that is, should I have my
class to teach, I would want to show them different methods of the first stages
of writing. Outlining, brainstorming, free
writing, graphing, or one of my favorites, “the Shitty First Draft.” Again, essays like “The Shitty First Draft”
are looked down upon at the high school level, and yet again, perhaps this is
why I just don’t fit well for high school education. Regardless of the class that I may end up teaching, I would like to be
honest with my class and show them, not tell them, my own difficulties and successes
in finishing a decent paper. Therefore,
below you will find my “Shitty First Draft,” along with a few captions that may
be out of order and not all utilized in the final text. But for now, most of my ideas are out, and
now I just have to fit down a few times and redraft until I am happy…and also,
throw in my sources and well.
"Shitty First Draft"
The above cited photograph is popularly
found in various version across the internet, it’s popularity is signified by a
society in which uncertantiy and instability are possibly the only
certainties. The art produced in our
contemporary society in all different forms of media, are seared with these
undertones of instability and at times offer a potentially solution, or at the
minimum some form of hope for a better future.
The film Slumdog Millionaire is one of the works produced by society in
a volatile time; the work highlights the struggle to find love against a
backdrop of conflicts with relgion, capitalism, crime, security, scarcity and
other such themes. Although the work is
brilliant, and a commendable piece, while contrasting the intelligence of life
experiences against indoctinized education, Slumdog Milliionare contradicts the
very undertone of values it questions and perpetuates the belifes of those who
rely on forturen and chance, thereby placting the masses and ensuring the
status quo.
Slum dog millionaire follows the
story line of Jamal, Salim and Latika as they grow up orphaned in various
cities throuought India. Although some
hardships are very much specific to certain regions of India, the kinds of
struggles they face are part of larger themes that man struggles against in
different cultures and societies, therefore these issues are both global and universal.
The film itself first introduces Jamal as a man who has won 20 million rupees;
but has been kidnapped and undergone torture by the local police because of
suspected cheating. Herein the main
subplot or theme of resistence is found, that of indoctrinized education
against the validity of life experiences.
“Professors, doctors, lawyers never get beyond 60 million what the hell can a slumdog know?” Again, Jamal’s intelligence and ability are
questioned because he was born and raised in abject poverty found in the “slums”
of the city; however as the film suggests through various “vignettes,” life
experience has as much value as “proper” education. Although this problem of proper education is
critical in India, it is not simply an issue in that country alone, thereby the
issue is universial as opppsed to specific to Inida.
The additional subconflicts found in
the film serve to highlight the primary conflict as they higthen its affect. One scene emphasizes conflicts of religion
and the scarcity of urban space. Indeed
it is during this scene that Jamal and Salim becom orphans, when their part of
the slum is overrun by reglious fanatics who yell out “they’re muslims, get
them!” Men, women and children are
beaten while the slum is destroyed and set ablaze. Latika herself is separated from Jamal and
Salim when the three of them are picked up and forced to become part of a crime
ring which forces children to beg on the street, at times purposefully mutilate
the children in order to obtain more money; she herself is then planned to be
forced into prostitution. Although each
of these are specific problems to the cultural specific areas of India, they
are also very much universal problems and concerns amongst any country,
developed or not. Each of course is also
in it’s own way a problems stemming or compounded by capitalism.
Education is promoted as a necessity to
combat the implications and difficulties of living in a capitalist society is
its expansion in imperialist form across the world. Although Slum Dog Millionaire highlights the
importance of life exepirence and equates if not negates that not all emphasis
should rest on organized or indoctrinized education, the film itself,
unfortunately, contradicts and undesmines its own purpose. The film establishes TWEVLE key points which
work to point out how an individual with a “lower” education can know just as
mjuch as someone with “higher” education.
These instances cover in money, religion, arts, ETC. and yet each time
the person from the slums has the knowledge.
However, despite the main points and polot of the film, the work
concludes with the main character Jamal, winning Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and thus he is able to afford the
luxury of financial security and is able to resuce his lifelong love from a
life of fear and prostitution. Yet this
is the very problem of the film, there is no solution suggested or offered—quite
the opposite. The film does no promote
education either in the life experience or organized sense, nor does it offer
some kind of solution to the very real universal problems explicitly found in
the film and the struggle of everyday conflicts, the work’s solution is that of
relying on chance and fortune to save the characters from the reality of these
difficulties. It therefore promotes a
blind faith in what many consider a one in a million chance, in other words,
there is no hope in attempting to prepare for the hardships of life, the
characters in life must rely on blind faith and fortune to save them from a
difficulty existence. In fact, the film
perpetuates religious and capitalist ideologies that some are born into a
wealth life, or chance bestows on them a successful existence or that God has
chosen an easier life for them than most, because destiny has decided that “it
was written.”
It
has been argued that religion, education, comsuerism, consumption, constitutions
and other such infasturctures are in fact systems of control which placate and
occupy the masses so as not to engage in talk of revolution and lead to class
rebellion. Although artistically
appealing, Slum Dog Millionaire takes on this very nature of placating the
masses.
Artistically and esthetically
pleasing, Slum Dog Millionaire is recognized worldwide as a powerful film speaking
not just to the American dream but fundamentally to a natural-instintual dream
of pursing a happy life with a partner, a home and children. However, despite the acclaim of the audience
must not lose sight of the improbable utopian implications the film represents,
aside from the capitalist placations of winning the lottery, by extension a system
of suppression and control.
It has a sense of hopelessness, a
colonization or imperialistic approach of hope, money saves all, it will find
love, buy safety and security, replacing the density of the slum replaceable
with the loan density of the American and what is therefore the answer to
subjugation by extreme poverty or extreme debt through finance by capitalism;
winning the lottery?
Mid
page 46 “It is that utopia is somehow negative; and that is is
Utopia
is contrary to human nature?
It
is not contrary but an implausible goal that human natur strives for, yet not
taken seriously. An impossibility that
as Jameson 44 indcates “in the mind –and perhaps fr that reason—all kinds of
institutional variouation and re-combinations seem thinkiabe” But again, Jameson 44 indicates that no such
agency has “appeared on the horizon that offers the slifghhtest chane ofr hopf
of modifying that staus quo.”
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