Slumdog Trillionaire communications

Let's borrow a page from the Best Picture winner and inject some positivism.

While Slumdog was racking up the awards at Sunday's Oscars, it occurred to me that government, media, and most of us for that matter, might want to consider borrowing a page from its success.

At one point, Slumdog was going straight to video. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

There was no money behind it; unknown actors, the book it was based on wasn’t a bestseller; and it was made in Bollywood, not Hollywood.   

So what happened?

Slumdog is centered on a negative, violent backdrop in squalor-filled Mumbai. People were tortured, eyes were gouged, lives were crushed, bullets were embedded and a little kid was covered in excrement. And that’s just the stuff I remember off the top of my head.

And yet… the movie somehow emanated optimism, not pessimism. 

Today’s economic climate is a lot like Slumdog, but with a Trillionaire vs. Millionaire moniker. But unlike Slumdog, there’s no optimistic undercurrent.   

I don’t think the world is coming to an end and I don’t appreciate so-called ‘experts’ predicting the economy will be lousy through 2010. These guys couldn’t even identify that we were in a recession until one year into it.

Sun Life Financial just surveyed 1, 226 working people in North America and discovered Canadians are more optimistic than Americans about the economy, health, personal finances, employer and government benefits. Same continent, relatively same dynamics (except health care), and yet a markedly different disposition, eh?

I agree with Bill Clinton when he said last week that while Obama’s done a good job, “I just would like him to end by saying that he is hopeful and completely convinced we’re gonna come through this.”

Negativism breeds negativism. We’ve talked about the Great Depression enough. It’s time to add some Rooseveltian optimism.