“Slumdog Millionaire” – the movie (2008); Cultural Globalization* not a Cosmopolitan** Culture (Part C)
Before we move on to the Cosmopolitan Culture which film director Mira Nair promoted through her first feature film “Salaam Bombay” in 1988,and later on with her other feature films,documentaries and cultural activities within the U.S.A and in other countries,I would like to introduce one last information in order to demonstrate how “corrupt”, “immoral” and “machiavellian” Cultural Globalization can be,when it has to protect its interests(financial and ideological), from persons who may threaten their global strategies.
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November 22, 2009
In essence,Onassis initiates his shipping activities in the beginning of the 1930s in Argentina,when he buys with his first money 2 old steamboats,which he names them “Socrates” and “Pinnelope” in honour of his parents.We Greeks,are always “first” in these acts of “superficial family sentimentality”!!But Aristotle Onassis soon realises,that the “big money” in the future ,will come from transporting “oil” by the various ocean lanes.As a consequence ,almost all his next moves in the shipping sector would be acquiring oil ship-carriers and transporting oil,especially from the oil producing countries of the Middle East.During this same period(1930s),he bought 10 merchant vessels from a Canadian company for 120,000 american dollars.At the same time,he registers all his ships in Panama(not in Greece),where the tarrifs and taxes are much lower than those of Argentina.In 1938,he builds his own oil carrier at the shipyards of Sweden,the “Ariston”,with a volume capacity of 15,000 tons (p.2.
There are two basic reasons why I have chosen Aristotle Onassis as an ideal type of a modern “Neanderthal”;one is personal and the other is more general. The first reason has to do with the older son of the woman friend to whom I have dedicated all those personal letters in my site. The son had been my student since he was 12 years old until the time he went abroad for his university studies. His father, who is a truly successful businessman, had only once given him a book as a present(from what I know), and that was when he was 17 years old. This particular book was the biography of Aristotle Onassis, and his son revealed to me that his father wanted him by reading this book to acquire the “proper guidelines” in becoming “socially successful” and of course “financially powerful”. “At that time”, the son considered his father΄s gesture as strange, while I don΄t think he ever read the book.