More on Slumdog

I really want to finish my homework, but you know, I haven't looked at my notes. The internet is such a tempter.

Dev Patel was on the Daily Show last night! His British accent is still so jarring, even though I've seen some of the daytime shows he's been on.

Now AR Rahman needs to go on The Colbert Report. Or you know, whatever. I mean, Stephen has mentioned Bollywood stars before, butchering their names, but he mentioned them. That is something.

Anyways, last night, instead of sleeping (or doing homework), I started reading the Slumdog thread at the Bollywhat forums. (I love this site and the forums and joined last month and will post an introductory post soon, I swear! I just feel like I have a lot to live up to.)

And here come MAJOR ASS SPOILERS, but no one reads this thing anyway, and I just wanted to say my bit.

In the book the movie is based on the character is given an Indian everyman name, so he could be Christian, Muslim, or Hindu. By changing his name to Jamal Malik, they made him Muslim, and his mom died in anti-Muslim violence.

I knew the last bit, that there were the anti-Muslim riots, and his mom died, but I did not know he was Muslim. Ignorant Westerner, to be sure, but I did not see the visual cues. I assumed they were some religion in name only, without "NOT MUSLIM" tattooed on their foreheads during the riots. I saw his religion as I see many Americans, maybe calling themselves something without practicing. (So he could have been Hindu and not had a shrine to the god in his house...)

Yeah, this is a muddle.

Which is why I couldn't just go into the Bollywhat forums as a newbie who's seen three (count 'em, THREE!) true blue Bollywood movies and say something like that.

And yet this hasn't inpsired me to summarize my horrendous Ancient Government class. We're "reading" Plato's Republic, and were supposed to read Book 2 last weekend. Only I had a cold and managed to process Slumdog Millionaire, so there! Ok, so my cold got worse as the weekend progressed, but still.

And Plato really made Socrates out to be an asshole in Book 1. "Come eat dinner with us, Socrates!" "Okay." "Here's my dad." "HOLY HELL YOU'RE OLD!" And it degenerated from there.