The chaiwalah has done it again! It is written, on my blog.

I feel overwhelmed writing this week because there’s the film, Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan, 2008), and the book, Q & A (Vikas Swarup), but there’s also the obvious connection to Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Adaptations and appropriations galore.

One of the first connections that I made between the two novels, Oliver Twist and Q & A, was that they were both very cinematic. Dickens and Swarup used film terminology and described different film techniques (although Dickens didn’t know it at the time) in their novels. This, in turn, probably had something to do with the quick response to adapting each novel (more quickly for Q & A since it didn’t have to wait for the technology to be invented).

Besides this, both novels had a protagonist that could leave his place in society, in ways that other characters could not. Because Oliver was actually rich, he could go between the different classes with ease. Ram Mohammed Thomas could also move through different groups in society because of his name. With a Hindu, Muslim, and Christian name, Ram was able to blend into the different cultures and religions through carefully selecting which name he used to identify himself. I was surprised though, that this interesting name did not carry over to the film. Instead of Ram Mohammed Thomas, the protagonist was named Jamal Malik — and he was clearly identified at the beginning of the film as being a Muslim. Although religion didn’t seem to be as important in the film, I still missed the literary name. However, the explanation and different uses of the name in the novel would probably have made the film much, much longer, so I suppose that’s why it might have been cut.

Although Oliver, Ram, and Jamal are similar, they are also all very different. Oliver stays angelic and pure throughout the novel, but Ram and Jamal participate in some pretty seedy acts. However, Ram and Jamal are relatively angelic in comparison to the other characters presented in their respective settings. A special difference that Ram and Jamal have though, that isn’t a factor for Oliver, is the ability to speak English. Just like Oliver’s purity, English is the thing that sets Ram and Jamal apart from any other street rat. The ability to speak English saves Ram and Jamal numerous times, just like Oliver’s innocence saves him.

A similarity between the two novels and the film is the identity and life of the city. London and Mumbai are both bustling with life, and act as characters themselves. These cities show both goodness and corruption, and the great divisions between the very rich and very poor. The slums of India are their own, vast network with different rules and ways of life, just like Oliver’s experience living within a crime network. Although the London crime community seems vastly smaller than that of the Indian slums, Oliver, Ram, and Jamal all grow up in seedy, fringe societies that have their own mores.

Another extremely obvious similarity is that all three boys are orphans who go from rags to riches. However, each orphan has a different situation. Oliver is orphaned after his mother dies in childbirth, but later finds living relatives. Ram is abandoned by his mother for unknown reasons, and we never of learn her identity or whereabouts. Jamal however, is the most different. He has a living mother at the beginning of the film, and even a biological brother — Salim. His mother is murdered when he is very young though, and this is how he and his brother become orphans.

The novels are more similar to each other than the film (once again) in that their endings are both so neat. We get this nice picture of how great Oliver’s life is now, and see that the good have all triumphed while the bad have gotten what they deserved. Ram’s life has a similar, neatly wrapped ending, with the good people winning and the bad losing. The film, however, leaves the ending unknown. Although we know that Jamal has won the money and the girl, and that his brother and the other baddies have taken some hits, we don’t know any more than that. I like the lack of the neatly packaged ending, although this was obviously replaced by the Bollywood-like dance sequence.

This post is getting quite long, so I’ll end with a few interesting pieces of trivia:

Dev Patel — the actor who played Jamal — was born in London, England, to Indian parents.

The film cost $15 million to make, and was almost released straight to DVD. Lucky for Fox Searchlight though, it wasn’t. In total, Slumdog raked in $377 million worldwide.

Picture Twist: Because it is funny, and not terrible like the orphan memes. Dear God.

I was very intrigued about seeing a less traditional adaptation of Oliver Twist, and was immediately aware of the subversions that Boy Called Twist (Timothy Greene, 2004) engaged in. Before I talk about these though, it is interesting to note some of the history of Cape Town, South Africa — the main setting of the film.

Europeans began arriving to the Cape in the late 1400s, and by the early 1800s, England had control of the colony. The British used their control of Cape Town as a way to sustain their rule in India. In more recent times, the Apartheid has played a significant role in the history of the country. Although over now, and over during the time period shown in the movie, vast, racial issues still exist. The film makes this issue plain as day.

The leader of the orphanage, who sells the children, is white; the farm owners whom Twist and the other children work for are white; and, in an interesting turn of events, Bill and Nancy are white — although Nancy’s ethnicity is ambiguous. Control and higher class still reside in the hands of the white, but, as was true in Oliver Twist, the rich are not always bad, and the poor are not always good. The same can be said about different races. I couldn’t help but notice how bad many of the white characters were, yet, at the same time, Mr. Beadle and Fagin were just as evil. People of any race, in any social or economic situation can be either bad or evil, and some of the issues that the characters faced reminded me of real issues plaguing Africa today.

Child slavery is a huge issue in Africa right now, and while many children are kidnapped, some families do sell their children into slavery. AIDs is also extremely rampant, and I see a social commentary forming around Greene’s adaptation of the text to modern, current issues. The state in the hypotext offers money for Oliver to be an apprentice, while the orphanage-owner sells Twist to be a worker — but both versions end up essentially as slaves. Also, Dick dies of starvation in the hypotext, while the Boy Called Twist version dies of the AIDs epidemic (from what I understood). The original text really seems to work in this updated context, which was a big surprise to me, but ultimately made sense.

The idea that everything isn’t as simple as it seems also reminds me of an issue shown in the original text. Although the literary version of Oliver ends up happy and living in the wonderful country with his friends and family, the country isn’t a sole representation of good, just as the city isn’t a sole representation of corruption. Oliver spent his childhood miserable in the country, just as Twist did growing up in the rural orphanage. And although the city does contain many evils in both works, and is portrayed in an extremely gritty way in Boy Called Twist, it contains aspects of good too. Both Oliver and Twist find their future families in the city. Like in the 1948 version of Oliver Twist, Mr. Brownlow/Mr. Bassedien is the grandfather. (However, Twist’s grandfather is Muslim, and I’m not completely sure what the significance of this is. I suppose it could have to do with the appearance of rising above your social class, without actually doing so, but I’m just not sure.)

Boy Called Twist borrows a lot from the 1948 adaptation, and some of the scenes look identical, just modernized. One scene that I loved was when the orphans watched hungrily as the higher class gorged themselves with food. The modernized scene definitely worked, and it was really disturbing to watch. Also, there is a similarity between the two adaptations of what is left out. The Maylie-family storyline is absent in both films, and Noah Claypole and Charlotte both lose relevance after Oliver’s/Twist’s escape to the city.

My analysis of Boy Called Twist could literally carry on for hours. So much is going on, on all levels, and it’s extremely interesting to analyze the “whats” and “whys”. Although Boy Called Twist didn’t work for me in some aspects (I felt like Monk’s role was never fully explained), I really liked all that it did, and I’m impressed by how relevant a text centuries-old could be for the modern issues of South Africa.

Plz sir

Although I enjoyed Dan Lean’s 1948 adaptation of Oliver Twist, it was confusing for someone who has only read up to chapter thirty of the original text. First, the plot line of Rose and her aunt was missing, as was the dramatic event of Oliver getting shot. And it seemed to me that Mr. Brownlow being Oliver’s grandfather was just too damn coincidental. I mean, really. There were almost two million people in London around the time that the story was set, yet Oliver just happens to come across the path of his grandfather? Along this line, how was Monks, who was somehow related to Oliver, all knowing? His knowledge of Oliver’s history and whereabouts was never explained, and there were a lot of confusing elements such as this that I found hard to believe.

Thus, I turned to the most trusted source on the internet: Wikipedia. I tried not to read/process too much, but I’m happy to know that Lean’s version isn’t an exact copy of Dickens’ book.

I understand the need for the change though, with the source text being so long, and with the many, meandering paths and plot lines. It’s interesting to see what didn’t make it and question why, but I think these thoughts we be more relevant after I’ve read the entire book.

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Fun fact from the film: When Nancy is bludgeoned to death, Sikes’s dog was tricked into scratching at the door by a stuffed cat placed on the other side.

Although I really like Oliver Twist, I feel sorry for the poor guy. A horrible singer named D’banj and Urban Dictionary have taken the innocent image of Oliver and completely destroyed it. I’m guessing Mr. D’banj and the U.D. contributors have not read the actual story…