What do you think the film is saying about the globalization of culture through media? We see the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” adapted in the Indian culture. Is this a sign of progress? Why or why not? What is this film staying about the effect of money on culture?

This movie shows that the media has a lot to do with the globalization of certain cultures. It clearly has spread ways of living and of thinking, mostly of the US culture, through many other parts of the world with very different cultures. I believe this could be a sign of progress because many places, such as India, are not very developed and most of its people live in poverty and have very little technology compared to countries like Canada or the United States. It can be a good thing that they start adopting some aspects of more modernized countries because they could improve the conditions in which they live. In the other hand, this can also be seen as something bad because by adopting the US culture, India loses many aspects of its culture, such as its traditions and every thing that makes them proud to be called Indian. What the film states is that any culture will adapt to the things that will help them produce more income, in other words money. If a culture notices another culture gets a lot of money by providing a certain service, or by doing a particular thing, it is very likely of that culture to imitate the other one to become wealthy as well.

In one exchange of dialogue in the film during the interrogation of Jamal, the police inspectors discuss the impossibility of what Jamal knows.
Police Inspector: Doctors... Lawyers... never get past 60 thousand rupees. He's on 6 million. [pause]
Police Inspector: What can our slumdog possibly know?
Jamal Malik: [quietly] The answers.
Discuss the irony in the film that Jamal “knows too much” and is suspected of cheating. Discuss the irony that in the end, his poverty may make him rich. What point is the film making? What is real wealth?

The irony of the movie is that Jamal is suspected of cheating because no one had ever gone that far in that game before and they can not possibly believe that someone as poor and ordinary as him can know the answers without cheating. It is very ironic because he is tortured for knowing the answers, when he actually had to suffer a lot during the experiences that gave him the knowledge of those answers. Of course, no one would believe a person as Jamal could know all the answers, but the curious thing is that he knew those answers by mere luck because by being so poor, he got to live many things that lead to those specific answers. The point the film is making is that wealth is not money, but knowledge. It also states that knowledge is not something owned only by the wealthy, but by those people who had actually gone through many experiences during their lives and have learned from them.