TERMS TO DEFINE IN CONTEXT:
A.    Poverty Porn and Mediated Fantasyand their relationship to Cruel optimism
B.    Hybridity and Intertextuality in this filmparticularly discuss how intertextuality amplifies our understanding of Danny Boyles goals as a filmmaker.  IN your response mention some of the other texts involved in this hybridity and intertextuality, such as Threepenny Opera but also Hulu and YouTube.
C.    Anamnesis scenarios

QUESTIONS (cite page numbers to indicate where in the essay you can identify each of the issues below: this is one criterion, that you are able to identify where the answer to the questions posed to you might find some answers):

1. How, according to the author, does the film punctuate[ ] a moment of Indias modernity
in which the metropolis (Mumbai) became the face of the neoliberal states projected
image; the slum of the title becomes its unspeakable obverse?  How does the chapter respond to its own question, Is Boyles film a revealing interruption of neoliberal state fantasy or just a neocolonial gesture?

2.  What does the author mean when he argues that his chapter tracks some of the controversies provoked by the film, which injected into Hindi film culture an aesthetics both unaccustomed and nonetheless thoroughly recognizable to Indians themselves? What were the controversies?  And on which side of the main controversies do you think the author himself comes down, overall?

3.  The author emphasizes the importance of epistemology in this film. Why is the films epistemological displacement important in evaluating the quality of the film itself, and in assessing the believability of Jamals story? According to the essay how are epistemic questions key to whether the film is realistic or a fantasy? What is your opinionIs the films main narrative more plausible than implausible?

4. Discuss what the essay argues about the ethicopolitical questions raised by the film regarding especially violence, religious and ethnic divisions and about poverty?