“Slumdog Millionaire” was a deserving winner of this year’s Best Picture Academy Award. Though some criticized the film for its portrayal of Mumbai slums, it had, as Hollywood used to say, “something for everyone.” It’s essentially a throwback of traditional movie plot lines, “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl,” “two brothers growing up on opposite sides of the law,” with a dash of the young Jimmy Stewart-type hero outfoxing the dishonest Claude Rains-type game show host. One imagines movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, circa 1938, chomping on a cigar, nodding in approval as he reads the screenplay.
Of course the story’s hook was its game show backdrop of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” But there’s a discordant note in the hero’s ultimate success on the show. It was admittedly the result of luck and character rather than intelligence. He answered all the questions, not through his knowledge, but because of a series of coincidences in his life that provided him with the correct answers (along with some undeniable personal savvy).
It’s a superb character study, but the game show subtext was simply a means to an end. And that aspect is emblematic of our culture’s infatuation with the current breed of game shows, which patronize the audience and diminish the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Old-fashioned knowledge is no longer accorded its proper respect in the contemporary anti-intellectual age of television (and movies).
President Barack Obama exhorts our country to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates and raise the country’s quality and level of education. But television undermines his message, inundating us with patronizing shows and dumbed-down questions, highlighting popular culture at the expense of history, the arts, math or science. Quick now, for $200 what was the name of Michael Jackson’s chimp?
Skeptics will say that, in spite of its initial promise, television has never been a font of art, culture or knowledge. Newton Minow famously dubbed television “the vast wasteland” nearly 50 years ago. But in America’s postwar self-improvement milieu, cultural and scientific literacy were at least universally available.
Discussing the media role in the development of cultural illiteracy, critic Terry Teachout noted, “I doubt that Ed Sullivan cared much for Maria Callas or Edward Villella, but that didn’t stop him from putting them on his show, along with Louis Armstrong and the original cast of ‘West Side Story’ (not to mention Jackie Mason and Senor Wences. … what’s really sad is that most people under the age of 35 or so don’t remember and can’t imagine a time when there were magazines that ‘everybody’ read and TV shows that ‘everybody’ watched, much less that those magazines and shows went out of their way to introduce their audiences to high art of various kinds.”
Today, television must dumb down to viewers because of an innate fear (no doubt justified) of boring its dwindling audience with dimwitted contestants staring blankly at difficult questions. Better to give them questions about Madonna. Or give them programming featuring sycophants and dullards unafraid to parade their off-key singing or survival skills.
Of course, more information is available today than ever. Hundreds of cable television channels and the Internet provide something for everyone. The irony is they also provide nothing for everyone; there are no longer reference points for things such as common musical tastes (the Beatles), famous scientists (Jonas Salk) or groundbreaking theatrical events (“My Fair Lady”).
And ironically, many of the country’s leading academics, far from distraught over this turn of events, hail it as a victory for cultural diversity. They have formed an unwitting alliance with the “learning is not cool” school.
“Slumdog Millionaire” is an excellent film, but unfortunately it won’t herald a Renaissance of intellectualism. The hero’s wisdom lies not in his knowledge but in his admirable character and triumph over adversity. He is the exception — experience alone doesn’t guarantee wisdom. Today, it’s unnecessary to guess the Third Musketeer — with a laptop the answer is available in a few milliseconds. Facts are now accessible instantaneously, but facts aren’t information, and even information isn’t wisdom. And without common wisdom, there is a slow disintegration of our culture.
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Cory Franklin is a physician who lives in Wilmette.
