Slumdogs Unite! - populist rage

I haven't seen the film Slumdog millionaire, but Mardon Seevey gives a good hint about why it won so many Oscars.

Op-Ed Columnist - Slumdogs Unite! - NYTimes.com:

The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle’s overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain’s trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.’s bonus. It’s even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president’s best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn’t get in front of the mounting public anger.

I don't know who Daschle and Thain are, but it is not hard to imagine the kind of people they are, and to think of South African equivalents. Frank Rich goes on to say:

The public’s revulsion isn’t mindless class hatred. As Obama said on Wednesday of his fellow citizens: “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success.” But we do know that the system has been fixed for too long. The gaping income inequality of the past decade — the top 1 percent of America’s earners received more than 20 percent of the total national income — has not been seen since the run-up to the Great Depression.

This is why “Slumdog Millionaire,” which pits a hard-working young man in Mumbai against a corrupt nexus of money and privilege, has become America’s movie of the year. As Robert Reich, the former Clinton labor secretary, wrote after Daschle’s fall, Americans “resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections.”

Middle-class Indians are up in arms about the film, because they say it misrepresents their country, but perhaps its popularity doesn't depend so much on how it represents India as how it represents life in general.