Octo vs. Slumdog
By dcmediagirl on February 20, 2009 at 8:45 AM in Current Affairs
It never ends with Octomom:
The octuplet family will have a place to reside if they lose their home. A California-based nonprofit called “Angels in Waiting” offered Suleman round-the-clock care and a place to stay with her 14 children. It would cost about $135,000 a month to provide the 12 caretakers necessary for the children, money that would have to come from public donations, founder Linda West Conforti said in Los Angeles.
Oh yes, you read that right. $135,000 a month, which the organization hopes will come out of our pockets.
This after the revelation that the family is in arrears on their mortgage to the tune of $23,224. Yet there seems to be money available for acrylic nails, repeated IVF treatments and multiple plastic surgeries.
And now we have Octograndpa, who until now has maintained a Gabor-like silence, telling Oprah that he questions his daughter’s sanity but that the grandchildren are “a gift from God”. Sorry, no. Octomom was infertile. The children are a gift from the IVF clinic.
Are there any actual adults in that house in Whittier?
At this point it’s not worth going over the details of this repellent story. It’s hard to tell which family member is telling the truth about anything. Their Rashomon-like , contradictory accounts boggle the mind.
So why inject the much beloved Slumdog Millionaire into this morass of lies, greed and cynicism?
There’s a simple reason this movie is likely to sweep the Oscars this weekend: Word of mouth. Simply put, people LOVE this film (myself included). If this film were a person it would have been hugged to death some time ago.
But what’s really striking, beyond the wonderful story, the brilliant editing, the gorgeous cinematography and the fantastic score is the appealing, childlike innocence of the lead character, Jamal, a Muslim orphan who overcomes his bleak, Dickensian childhood and despite the unimaginable hardships he suffers pulls himself up by his bootstraps, gets job at a call center, puts up with the indignity of being called a “chai walla” on television (“walla” being a term equivalent of calling a black man “boy”) and, in the end, triumphs. He could have stayed on the street. He could have pursued a life of crime like his brother. But by virtue of, well, virtue and hard work, Jamal succeeds. Hell, that an illiterate boy from the street could get a job serving tea at a call center is reason enough to celebrate, the “Millionaire” plotline notwithstanding.
So on the one hand, you have a poor teenager who overcomes adversity the honest way while hanging on to his self-respect. That’s the movie version of life. On the other, you have a profligate, selfish woman, born into the middle class but now dependent on handouts to support a family she deliberately chose to keep adding to despite her lack of resources.
There’s something very, very wrong with this picture.
But there’s nothing wrong with “Slumdog Millionaire”. Best of luck to this wonderful film at the Academy Awards…and if you haven’t seen it yet, please see go. Now. Stop reading my Octomom rantings, log off your computer and GO NOW. You’ll be glad you did.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
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.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
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