Monday, April 30, 2012

Perspective please...

I just walked out halfway through a screening of Avengers. It just did not appeal to me at any level. Stories about intergalactic missions and saviors averting apocalypse have lost all novelty. Apart from that, there is a scene in the movie where one of the members of the team deputed to save the world is recruited from a slum in Calcutta. Frankly, Hollywood's portrayal of India as the land of poverty and disease has been done to gratuitous death. I think Slumdog Millionaire gave this poverty porn a new cachet. Please visit India and see for yourself the many strands of life that exist in this country. It is not all gloom.

4 comments:

  1. Ditto Africa - and it's not just Hollywood:

    http://mumpsimus.blogspot.de/2012/04/good-sign-for-caine-prize.html

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  2. Thanks Lee. Evaristo puts it far more evocatively!

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  3. Hollywood gets South America wrong in the same way, just as often, if not more. Hollywood has never been particularly deep in its analysis of world culture, and is repeatedly guilty of both exoticism and Orientalism. LOL I thought that was a given. I don't expect much from Hollywood beyond recycled clichés; some of which are fun, some of which have been done to death. I look to independent film with higher expectations, although even there it's sometimes off target.

    "Poverty porn" is a good phrase. Right up there with "pornography of despair." There's no doubt some overlap there, too.

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  4. Art, I like your term 'recycled clichés'! Of course, it's possible, at least in theory, to recycle usefully.

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