To be honest, I find this piece almost disgusting to read – not because of the shots taken at the films themselves, but also the source material being slammed. I’m not saying Gump or Slumdog were brilliant (not a huge fan of either), or were based on brilliant works, but Rushdie calling the latter based on “a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name,” is a little insulting. Frankly, it kind of paints Rushdie as a child throwing off a hissy fit – and you haven’t really portrayed yourself in any better a light by calling out “herd instinct.” Personal opinion in a blog is expected, but the voracity of the personal digs at the material here just reads like an angry critic who feels, for some reason, personally rubbed in the wrong because a particular film cleaned up at an entirely useless awards ceremony.

I am not a fan of adaptations either, but I will say that in certain instances they can achieve of impact that was lacking in the source material. Personally I can think of three: Children of Men, by PD James, felt very uneven at times, yet the film became a streamlined dystopian film that managed to straddle a line between epic and personal. Lord of the Rings, for many, is almost unreadable due to the entirely uninvolved characters and obsessive detail, but the films gave the books a life they were sadly lacking. And No Country for Old Men… I respect Cormac McCarthy’s work, but it can be an uninvolving, difficult to emotionally penetrate work, art though it may be. The film, on the other hand, managed to work the material into a pulsing, almost rhythmic cat-and-mouse game that took the almost script-like style of the book and pushed it into a more complete dimension.

This article illustrates the current problem with journalistic criticism – the idea that it is good criticism to slam, the work or the populace that enjoys such a work, without providing academic or social justification for doing so. Newspaper film critics have been falling into this trap for years now, to the point where most reviews read more like high school note-passings aimed at making fun of the slow kid in the class just for kicks and giggles. In other words, because you can, and because you know people will read it. All that you and Rushdie have done with this article is to put an exclamation point on this sort of childish behaviour. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that if you can’t say anything nice, not to say anything at all? Wise advice to keep in mind, for you, Rushdie, and all critics. Slam your readership, but don’t expect that readership to continue to grow.

Salman Rushdie is an insufferable blowhard. “Adaptation, the process by which one thing develops into another thing, by which one shape or form changes into a different form . . .” and away he goes. I haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire or read Q&A, but the premise sounds like a clever one for a popular film. No more fantastic or ridiculous than Rocky being plucked from the mean streets of Philly for a chance to go 15 rounds with the champ.

I can think of several excellent film adaptations off the top of my head. The Maltese Falcon (Huston’s). Solaris (Tarkovsky’s). The Godfather (I and II). I still haven’t seen No Country For Old Men. Does Chigurh lug that air compressor around with him in the movie? Now THAT was ridiculous.

Rushdie is only bitter because Midnight’s Children hasn’t been successfully adapted yet. (Nor will it.) As someone who was born and raised in Mumbai, I found Slumdog Millionaire to be true in many ways to the hardscrabble life kids live. And hey, in these trying times, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism. What I like best about Slumdog is that it’s exactly like a Bollywood film, only as interpreted by a Westerner. What I also love about it is that it’s unapologetically and unabashedly hopeful and romantic. It’s a pearl among the swine of overindulgent, oversentimental swill that comes out of Hollywood these days (Benjamin Button being an example).

Also, I thought the novel, Q&A, is one of the most poorly written books I have read.

To add to that — all I’m saying is that maybe the reason this movie did so well is because people need to see a film like it right now – triumph even in the most desperate of circumstances.

To wit, some escapist classics of Depression-era (aka The Golden Age of) Hollywood:
My Man Godfrey – a rich society woman picks a Forgotten Man off the street and makes him her butler. Only he’s secretly a millionaire.
Gone With the Wind – a woman marries lots of men and shoots one. She makes clothes out of drapes and covets her friend’s husband.
King Kong – a giant monkey destroys New York.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – an idealistic young man uses his brains and oratory skills to stick it to The Man.
and last but not least…
The Wizard of Oz – a girl, a scarecrow, a lion, a tin man, and a dog travel down a yellow brick road, sing a lot of songs, and fight a green witch.

I agree that Rushdie’s criticism is passionate, but to dismiss him as a jealous blow-hard is to throw out the baby with the bathwater. His critiques are not unique, though his are the only only ones Western audiences appear to give the time of day to.

My wife and I were in Mumbai for the opening weekend of Slumdog Millionaire in India and we were surprised by the critical reception. People rioted in Bihar (granted, a powder keg of a state hungry for any flame) and human rights lawyers filed lawsuits against the few prominent Indian actors in the film. Bollywood was openly pissed off, and politicians jumped on the denunciation band-wagon. Time Out Mumbai did an excellent issue about the slums in the city as an overt criticism of the Hollywood portrayal.

To get more of an angle on what was going on we toured Dharavi slum, Asia’s largest and the basis for Slumdog’s imagery, talking to locals and getting an inside scoop on what slum life is actually like. Despite Swarup’s description of the slum (notably, he wrote based on urban legend and hadn’t previously visited) and Western journalists’ fascination with trash, addiction and gangs, the slums were pretty mundane. What separated them from, say, the Taj Ganj district in Agra or rotting Chinatown in Kolkata was that the homes and businesses were built illegally several generations ago. People in Dharavi were hard-working and sent there children to good schools. They flashed their pride in big smiles. And they were pissed at the depiction of open latrines and squalor. The people in Dharavi might live under a tin roof but they had wide screen TVs. They were making it in the big city.

Notably, they were scared of the new high-rise apartments in their midst backed by various government schemes. In the modern buildings people had privacy and that was where the drug dealers and mafia men lived, so they said.

What is interesting to note about Rushdie’s criticism is precisely the fact that he goes to town on the worst kind of fiction. Rushdie, I’m willing to bet, wants fiction that draws us back to reality (this might account for the absence of movies such as The Godfather in his crappy-remake-list). Slumdog was a decent flick — the child actors in particular were amazing. And Danny Boyle made a concerted effort to sympathize with the slums. But both Slumdog and Q&A were guilty, according to Rushdie’s logic, of doing nothing more than pandering to our own stereotypes and preconceptions of poverty in India.