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from SLUMDOG'S RECEPTIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
Every time a film about India made by a Western director gains critical acclaim in the West, two related phenomena seem to also occur: the greatest hits of negative stereotypes are brought out and served up in the film (think poverty, squalor and general backwardness), even as the “usual suspects” emerge to tout its merits. I am referring, of course, to the comprador class of critics; those native-born, self-styled authorities who are summoned to validate the authenticity of the work at hand and to defend it against the potential critiques of their brethren. With the Oscar winner, Slumdog Millionaire (2008), one witnesses the re-emergence of both phenomena. In such instances a third phenomenon also frequently occurs, namely, the referencing of the last instance of such a cinematic “milestone” — in this case, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) — as a marker of how far we (as a Western/ global culture) have come. Hamid Dabashi has noted the recurrence of the comprador phenomenon in recent times:
Given the transnational disposition of the globalised empire, a crucial function of its ideological foregrounding is predicated on the role that expatriate intellectuals can play. […] In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, comprador native intellectuals were actively recruited to perform a critical function for the militant ideologues of the US Empire. Their task is to feign authority, authenticity, and native knowledge and thus to inform the US public of the atrocities that are taking place throughout the world, in the region of their native birth in particular, by way of justifying the imperial designs of the US as liberating these nations from the evil of their own designs.
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