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Basically, Slumdog Millionaire is an inspirational movie about a boy who took a long journey to force himself out of poverty from the slums of India by fighting his way to get a job and landing a chance at winning in a popular TV game show. The protagonist, Jamal Malik, is driven to find his lost childhood friend, Latika, in order to rekindle and pursue his feelings for her. In the end, Jamals becoming a contestant in the TV game show was what brought him and Latika together at the end of the movie. At first glance, you would think that Slumdog Millionaire is an inspirational movie about love and becoming successful from poor beginnings. However, a closer look shows a deep interpretation on the concept of globalization. Globalization, as defined by Merriam-Websters Dictionary, is the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets. After watching the movie, I was amazed at how the people behind it were able to integrate globalization into a cleverly-made movie. There were several scenes in the movie which depicted globalization and its effects to a certain country. In overview, the movie tells the audience that globalization goes beyond the process of trade of goods from country to another but it also encompasses that idea that it affects many aspects of a country. This includes their clothing, language, media/entertainment industry, and labor. Moreover, globalization is somehow equated to westernization in the movie. I say so because there were many instances when the culture of America was reflected in the movie. As mentioned above, one of the things that globalization has an effect is in the clothing of Indians. Particularly in the Taj Mahal scene, we see that there are people who wear various Western-inspired clothing such as the all-time classic jeans. Moreover, Jamal and his brother Salim were stealing shoes from the tourists and afterwards Jamal chose to wear the Americanbrand Converse and the cowboy boots for Salim. Even the Indian host of the gameshow Who Want To Be A Millionaire wears a tie and suit which is an example of American-style clothing.

Second, globalization impacts language of a country as well. Although the movie is originally from India, made by Indian people, the characters do not speak pure Indian in the movie. In fact, there would be more parts spoken in English than in the Indian language. Unlike in Japanese or Korean movies, when it is shown all over the world, the native language is still retained and subtitles are just added. Also, the characters in the movie have become very fluent in speaking the English language. This can be considered as good thing, especially to Jamal, because it opens his horizons to much more opportunities in terms of having a job. Looking at the bigger picture, though, there is a tendency that the Indian culture is lost and authenticity is diminished too because of the use of English language more than Indian language. Third, the media/entertainment industry is also affected by globalization. The movie revolves around the experiences of the protagonist that allowed him to answer all the questions in the game show. This is a very clear example of globalization because Who Want To Be A Millionaire is originally an American game show and we see that it has penetrated the Indian culture already. The Indians are very eager to watch the game show already because to some extent, it has become part of their culture. On another note, this hinders the creativity of Indians to think of new kinds of entertainment for the people because they have the option to just copy game show formats or purchase a TV show franchise from other countries. This is true for other countries besides India. In fact, Philippines is also a victim of this. We can also take media in relation to globalization on another perspective. The media is an important factor that facilitates globalization. In the movie, India is depicted as a very poor country which makes the audience think that the place is very dirty and forms an image in their minds that India is entirely like the slums. However, other countries as depicted as a better place to live and work such as the case for the United States. People develop this so-called American dream because they think that the greener pastures in America will help them to succeed in life and have a better chance at living. This is already an after-effect of globalization.

Outsourced workforce Hollywood=Bollywood

Given the aforementioned effects of globalization, the question now is would you still want to be a millionaire? Interconnection + opportunity for work (call center job)

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