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I’ve never really understood how movies inspire people to travel, but for better or worse, they do seem to — consider what Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand or what Australia is supposed to do for Australian tourism.
Both of those cases probably fall in the “better” category. Vagabonds might not be the target audience, but if it gets a few people out on the foreign roads, that’s generally a good thing.
But there’s also the more disturbing scenario, such as the film Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s film about an orphaned street child in Mumbai who overcomes hardship, wins a fortune on a game show and gets the girl of his dreams. The film recently picked up ten Oscar nods and has proved a hit with western audiences.
I haven’t seen the film, so I withhold judgment (though I will say it sounds pretty cliche), but the Telegraph reports that Millionaire is inspiring an uptake in westerners who want to join one of Mumbai’s already-controversial “slum tours.”
Couple that with a film that Indian’s have called “a white man’s imagined India,” adding that it’s “not quite snake charmers, but it’s close ,” and you might begin to see why many Indians are a bit upset about Millionaire.
But as with thorny travel questions — like, should you go to Burma? — the reality is never as cut-and-dried as we’d like it to be. Your first instinct is probably to see the slum tours as exploitive and a “very bad thing.”
But the Telegraph’s Nigel Richardson actually went on a slum tour and reports:
A television programme damned them as “poverty tourism” and a government tourism minister threatened to have them shut down, although they are run perfectly legally, with the blessing of the local police as well as residents.
But they are conducted with exemplary sensitivity, and the cooperation of the residents, and 80 per cent of profits are donated to local charities. Most importantly, they certainly did not feel exploitative to me. In fact I found touring a place like Dharavi to be an education.
It’s hard to outright condemn the film, the slum tours it might be inspiring or the people going to either. After all, the idea of seeing the slums of Mumbai isn’t in itself a bad thing, it all depends on the context in which it’s presented. If Richardson’s portrayal reflects the typical slum tour, then perhaps they aren’t as bad as I’ve been imagining them.
I’m curious how Vagablogging readers feel about slum tours and other controversial travel ideas — is it exploitive? And if it is exploitive, is it possibly still worth it if the tours inspires participants to help, or at least opens their eyes? Or is it simply too ethically murky to judge?
[via World Hum, photo by Wen-Yan King, Flickr]
January 27th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
As far as the movie itself goes, I think there’s nothing to condemn. It’s based a) on an Indian novel, and b) on the reality of Mumbai’s slums (minus the winning-a-fortune part). Nobody is going to be thrilled to see their country’s darkest side being shown off worldwide — I think the Indian response has as much to do with discomfort as any genuine sense that this is a misrepresentation.
You should see it, Scott. It is fabulous and anything but cliched.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I have images of tourist guides with bullhorns announcing, “And on your left you can see an authentic Indian child with flies in his eyes! Yes, before you today is a real-life street child!”
On the one hand, it seems a little creepy to go somewhere to stare at the poor people. On the other, as you mentioned, maybe it will open people’s eyes to what true poverty is. There is also the probability of tourists spending money in these areas, which when coupled with the donation to local charities will most likely benefit the area.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Slum Dog is a great film and imagine criticism it’s receiving about highlighting rags to riches is mostly likely because Indians are feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable to see the negative or difficult side of their homeland shown for all to see.
I’ve taken a township tour in South Africa and I felt it was purely educational. It was lead by a local guy who grow up in the township and is now raising his own family there. I was shocked to discover not many South Africans ever come on a township tour for various reasons. Typically, it’s because they’re terrified and worried for their safety and years under a apartheid government doesn’t help. However, being lead by a guide is safe and in my experience residents of the township didn’t mind us there.
It’s easy to judge a “poverty tour” without actually experiencing one but ironically slum tours can be very educational and may be the very way to start change, if only locals were willing to see how others in their own country lived.
January 27th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I’ve gone on the ubiquitous African township tour too. It left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, the group I was with had largely not even met indigent people in their own neighborhoods let alone internationally. On the other, they did things that mortified me, like taking pictures of other people’s children and waving a digital camera around like a toy. I also don’t think you can really understand the effects of HIV in SA until you go where it lives and see the missing generation, kids raising kids.
However, one of the guys (local) who ran the NGO said this: “These kids are growing up in a different world. We don’t have enough technology to give them a shot yet, to allow them to get out of the conditions they grew up in. When you come here, it shows them the outside world cares about them and is interested in what they do. But more importantly, it exposes them to different cultures and teaches them things about the world that we don’t hav ethe resources to teach them right now. They’re learning from you. Black people in this country are just as afraid of white people as the reverse, but there’s no way for these kids to be successful unless they embrace multiculturalism in this world. They need to understand you so someday they can do business with you.”
That’s pretty Rainbow Nation if you ask me.
If your tour operator dramatizes the poverty people are living in to make it a spectacle, stay away. If they can tell you they’re letting people into the neighborhood for reasons beyond the tariff, maybe it’s worthwhile.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
[...] a kind of follow-up to yesterday’s post on the rising popularity of slum tours in Mumbai, I thought I would share a link to The Places We Live. The site features panoramic photos of slums [...]
January 29th, 2009 at 3:11 am
I saw Dharavi with Reality Tours and Travel http://realitytoursandtravel.com/ and I heartily recommend them. Other than the overall delight I took in being in Bombay [which reminded me of Tokyo], Dharavi w/ Krishna Poojari was the high point of my several weeks visit. I have never seen such enterprise and hard work concentrated in so relatively small and inauspicious an area. Reality is working with Dharavi’s communities–and that is what they are: communities. That they are living and working conditions no Westerner would envy is much less important than the people [not a beggar in sight, just people going about their work or, if they paid attention to us, smiling and welcoming] and the homes and workplaces they have built for themselves. It is also important to remember that in addition to all the workers one sees in Dharavi, thousands more, half the city, come to work every day from places like Dharavi. Admiration was what I felt, a wish somehow to contribute was what I came away with. If you have the chance, go! Doesn’t matter where, just go and see for yourself what people can make of themselves, for themselves against incredible odds.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:24 pm
[...] subject was picked up today on Vagablogging. “I’ve never really understood how movies inspire people to travel,” writes the [...]