The Double Logic of Remediation in Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire, a film about slums in Mumbai which received worldwide recognition, is representing a culture which is ‘unfamiliar’ for the intended global audience. The meaning making process becomes complicated because what is being constructed in the film could be acknowledged as the ‘real’ representation of this other part of the world. As a cultural products with three layers of remediation process (a novel into a screenplay and then into a film), Slumdog Millionaire is definitely a battlefield of representation with many possible ruptures of meanings. By questioning how the film uses the double logic of remediation, immediacy and hypermediacy, the analysis will unveil the ‘feel good film of the year’ from its seemingly realistic portrayal of slums in Mumbai as its strategy to guarantee that the viewing position of the global audience functions in an optimal way. This research was made possible with excellent support from Annie van den Oever, Miklos Kiss, and Liesbeth Korthals Altes from the Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.