Let's celebrate the bright side of poverty

Submitted by Mahmood Sanglay

I watched Slumdog Millionaire and felt sick. Never have so many watched so much poverty on a silver screen and felt so good about it. The deception disgusts and the irony offends — extremely.

But I apologise for this undeserved kindness. Mine is just one of few critical voices amid the exaggerated, ingratiating acclaim lavished on this film by fawning movie reviewers. This production presses all the right buttons so that, at the most basic levels, the façade behind the scenes goes unnoticed.

I remember sitting next to some starry-eyed teenage girls in the cinema. From their conversation I gathered they were from Mitchells Plain. “Kyk, daai moere van India is ook nogal arm,” said one. That was a very telling observation, pregnant with stereotypes. The young people were fascinated by the common poverty recognised in the lives of Indian screen characters and South Africans.

See, they look like the rich Indians of Cape Town, but they are poor like us. The same filth, the same problems, just dressed up more dramatic and more gruesome for the screen. It’s India, you know, that far-off spicy place, the home of Bollywood, but we’re not very different after all. (And thank God for globalisation and the IPL. Now we can also idolise the Bollywood stars, like the other Indians.)

It’s all very nice with an oh-so-tender love story, pretty faces and the thrill of the million-in-one chance of a win for the lovely couple. Let’s forget about our own misery and let’s go hysterical, like the poor masses of Mumbai, clapping for the good fortune of Dev and Latika. Let’s forget that a worthy life has little to do with good luck, but a lot more to do with hard work. Let’s forget that we ought to be inspired to rise up and resist those who impose poverty on us, instead of being mesmerised by glamorous reality TV game shows that add an extra sparkle to the billion-dollar smiles of the TV networks. Let’s forget that the mother of the main protagonist is killed in Hindu-Muslim violence and that his brother prays like a Muslim before setting off to commit the next crime for his gang boss. Let’s forget that these highly provocative themes are glossed over in the movie so fast that we remain spellbound by the dizzy hysteria of the main plot.

Reality sucks but fiction fascinates. And the farce is so well dressed up in tinsel, it won eight Oscars. Hoorah.

The key here is forgetting the reality and foregrounding the fiction. Media, in its myriad new forms, is now the means to feed the poor so they remain happy, docile consumers of perverse fiction about their own miserable lives. If they don’t have bread, give them Hollywood, Bollywood or reality TV. The masses can easily be entertained by the silver screen, at least those who can afford a movie ticket (and those who get a peek at the pirate DVDs distributed before the official release on the big screen.)

But what about the middle class? They too need their dose of let’s-forget-the-misery-of-the-poor medication. Dubai’s the place. And this oasis rocks … sorry, used to rock. The joint with the greatest concentration of waltzing cranes on earth — 30 000 or 24% of the world crane population — has come to a standstill. Someone ought to write a dirge for the idle cranes of Dubai, now stuck like thousands of poison needles into the dusky desert skyline.

The façade here is what lies behind the city that boomed out of the desert. It’s a real city, in a very real desert, built on two very notable phenomena. The first is a colossal, fragile mountain of debt within the construction sector. On February 3, Al Jazeera broadcast an interview by celebrity host Riz Khan with three experts, including Tarik Yousef, the dean of the Dubai school of government. Al Jazeera deems it fit to place three guests glorifying globalisation on one panel, each of them mouthing the kind of ambivalent mumbo-jumbo on the meltdown one would expect from politicians. There is no activist or a voice critical of the reckless deregulation in Dubai and the system that sustains it. Khan’s feeble questions smack of the obsequious compliance with media owners who have a material interest in sustaining the myth of Dubai as an economic haven that will soon recover. Everything is just so hunky dory, even in a time of crisis.

Yousef first extols the virtues of globalisation, which, he concedes, brought about the rapid growth through massive debt in a highly deregulated financial environment, followed by the meltdown. Then he proceeds, in response to a viewer’s question, to extol the virtues of the Islamic financial system which stipulates shared profits and losses and an emphasis on equity as opposed to debt. And he does not see the fundamental contradiction. How does one reconcile rampant capitalism and financial liberalism with the disciplined financial management principles in a truly Islamic economic system?

Khan and his trio then start forgetting the grim reality and foregrounding the spoiled fantasy. They forget to mention the second phenomenon that built Dubai — slave labour. An estimated one million exploited migrant workers incur grievous debt in their home counties to pay recruitment agencies up to £2 000 in fees, unaware that they are destined to become slaves in another country. They earn an average of £120 per month and are forced to work a 6-day week, for up to 12-hour shifts. Living conditions are appalling and an average of six workers are squeezed into single-room dwellings.

Of course, Khan and his panellists also forget to mention that Dubai is the prostitution capital of the Islamic Middle East. Research by journalist Dan Stoenescu shows that globalisation accentuates the sex trade throughout the Middle East, which has become both an exporter and importer of prostitution. However, says Stoenescu, Saudis prefer to travel to places like Thailand where they have a reputation for generosity and violence. In March 2006 UAE police announced they had deported about 4 300 prostitutes from Dubai. The women of Eastern Europe are the carnal delicacy of choice.

The middle class in South Africa that jets off to Dubai may be aware of the emirate’s financial woes, but they remain largely ignorant of the vast gulf between the super-rich and the abject poverty of foreign workers. But it is a convenient ignorance. It is easier on the conscience to look on the bright side and console oneself that at least these foreigners have work. Back in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh they have nothing. And many are those Indians in South Africa who have relatives working as migrant labourers in the Middle East. This is not just inconvenient, it’s personal. More than 300 000 members of this foreign underclass are now jobless. Many of them had to go home empty-handed when the bubble burst. Many are trapped in Dubai’s debt.

The bright side of poverty shines from a distance, on silver screens, award-winning front page photos and high-res electronic images. There’s not much that can beat the image of abject poverty in enhancing creative and artistic value in contemporary media. It can even be dressed up in fancy language like that of this essay.

And so even the writer’s voice is trapped in this perverse celebration.

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