Chapter 9 - “It is Written” (in Invisible Ink): Slumdog Millionaire's SFX and the Realist Overwriting of Bollywood Spectacle

Summary

Identifying the “street urchin film” as a transnational cinematic genre that encompasses earlier films like Shoeshine (dir. De Sica, 1946) and Oliver Twist (dir. Lean, 1948), João Luiz Vieira notes that in recent years, this genre has come to hinge itself upon the spectacle of urban filth, poverty, and criminality that envelops abject, destitute youth rendered within an exoticized third world.1 In the contemporary space of the “street urchin film,” the mise-en-scene of the Latin American favela becomes interchangeable with that of the Asian slum — an equation facilitated by a common denominator of spectacular cinematic alterity that wholly dislocates the oppressive world of the street urchin from the realities of the so-called first world. Consolidating the Third World as alien, as a powerful and distant vortex that brims with decay, the space of the street unfolds as one that is nonetheless visually arresting in its raw appearances and rough edges. Tying aestheticized representations of the slum to contemporary, transnational youth cultures of fashion and music, e.g., commercial rap, Vieira explains:

[the street urchin films'] key innovation lies in focusing on native excluded youth as authentic subjects of, and shareholders in, this transnational rap culture. The international impact and the 2009 Oscar consecration of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire comes as no surprise then: its authentic favela locations, the use of a young and largely inexperienced cast who were asked to improvise dialogues and even actions, a cool soundtrack creating a musical landscape at once local and global, and its frenetic editing style are all part of an aesthetic package ostensibly inspired by City of God to ignite an effect of instant reality.