Remember back when people
kicked up a fuss about how the 'slumdog' in 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a derogatory term and there were slum-dwellers who objected to being called 'dogs'? I remember thinking (and I'm sure I wasn't the only one) that they were making too much of a hue and cry over a stupid movie. After all, you'd think that people who don't like slum-dwellers would probably come up with worse epithets, and people who cared about them wouldn't be so insensitive, now would they? Well, think again:
I saw this ad up on the Indian Express' site and took a screen-shot. That's actually an ad for the
SOS Children's Villages, a respectable (AFAIK) NGO that does
pretty good work for kids the world over. So why in the world would they call these kids 'real slumdogs'? Even if they wanted to tie their work in to the movie to try and get more donations, there's got to be a better way of putting it, right? Right?
poor lil developing country people
ReplyDeleteyou should step inside a development economics seminar sometime. The arrogance of white people sometimes - although unintended - is scarcely believable.
Ah, the white man's burden. "Slumdog" is eventually going to lose its original negative connotation, becoming something like "street urchin" perhaps.
ReplyDeleteStill a bit stupid though. Like they hadn't seen the movie or something.