There seems to be some major denial going on here.

Also, “poverty porn” is a horrible term. It’s so freaking negative.

Also, Slumdog was a movie about slum dweller. Should the director, Danny Boyle, include middle class wealthy people hanging out in the slums to give an evenhanded view of life in India? I don’t get the controversy over that film.
Also, why does every damned movie about a minority have to be some political statement about the reality of minority life. Can’t “Slumdog Millionare” just be a movie about a poor person overcoming the odds/escaping reality, that just happens to be set in India? It is a wonderful story when viewed that way. Why does it come under more scrutiny than say a movie like “Frozen River” or “Wendy and Lucy?” The same goes for the movie “Precious” as well, which seems to be getting labeled with the same criticisms.

Also, the way greenhouse gases work, reflecting short wave radiation, and allowing long wave radiation to pass through, means that when energy hits the earth, (and loses energy/ becomes longer /because that’s what happens)more greenhouse gases create a barrier that warms the earth.

It’s simple science actually.

As for the rich colors – well, lots of TV ads, shows, movies, etc. are filmed in very rich color these days. It’s a trend. And to be honest, Delhi *is* an incredibly colorful and vibrant city that really comes alive with this color-drenched filming style (sorry, I don’t know what it’s called). Just because it’s a cliche doesn’t make it false.

Second, I would rather think that global warming was occurring and be wrong than believe it WASN’T occurring and be wrong. Devastation vs. humiliation… hmm, which one do I choose?

There are some definite similarities to Slumdog in the video’s aesthetic – the color oversaturation, dramatic angles, skewed formal composition, quick incidental images of people and faces with heavily symbolic detail, and so forth. But never mind that this technique was already ubiquitous in everything from American Express ads to popular films ranging from “Mystic River” to “The Constant Gardener.” Did Deepa even watch the video, or just react straight out of her arse? If you blinked a couple of times, you’d miss the brief flashes of dire poverty – which certainly do represent a huge number of people. And how are we to know that none of the people pictured here were “westernized English speaking people” when we don’t hear them speak at all?

As for the use of English… why on earth would you produce a short commercial for an English-speaking audience, featuring a perfectly eloquent English speaker, but not make it in English?

And why should a 90-second ad about climate change be expected to “represent” every facet of a society of 1.2 billion people? Is that even possible?

To my eye, there were quite a lot of middle-class people presented in this video, I think people who haven’t spent much time in cities of this economic strata might not realize they are middle class because their clothes aren’t as fancy as middle-class in more developed countries. And please tell me, what would be the point of including rich people in this? Because the narrator says the crisis spans all classes? Would you have the same requirement of including what would probably be rather random-looking footage in a montage about climate issues in the US that tries to highlight the people who are out in public, unprotected from the impact?

I think the level of sensitivity is very hard to negotiate around these issues, but that the “poverty porn” argument does take it to a very damaging and ultimately useless and bitter end. I also think that expecting every visual representation of a place be completely three-dimensional and accurately representational is totalizing and damaging to art.