Misrepresentations

Representations 

The core concern of the artists today might be how to wriggle out of the misrepresentation mafia! Long back when a Malayalam movie was titled as ‘Ponnurukunna Thattan’, the Thattan tribe’s representatives went to court pleading how the title will hurt the sentiments of the community since the title, they argued, represented them in poor light. To the best of my memory the movie was re-titled as ‘Ponnurukunna Poocha’. Lucky for the movie makers that the cats didn’t approach any court. No cat with enough self respect will oblige to accept the proverbial Malalyalam query: ‘what’s the cat doing at the goldsmith’s’? Because why can’t a cat be inquisitive enough to know what the goldsmith is up to? After all, a cat is cat, right? I mean, how does one truly represent the ‘cattiness’ of a cat? Is plain observation beside a goldsmith beyond the ken of a ‘typical cat’?

Misrepresentation grievances are on the rise. This has become so habitual these days that one has begun to expect a plea at the court the moment a big banner movie or a big sounding book is released. What is the truth of this state of affairs? How real are the cases of misrepresentations? It is a given of common sense that a question of misrepresentation can emerge only from a representation. If that is the case, then what are real, true representations? How do we truly represent a dog, for that matter? With an upturned tail? With a prominent bark? Or a more (or less) prominent bite? On its haunches, listening to music? Just loyal? With an extra-sensitive sense of smell? It is one of the universals that representations often follow the generalizations. Exceptions are left behind. An exceptionally auditory dog is no dog worth its wagging tail because a dog, more than anything, smells well. Can we take the man who represented the dog with extra power of audition as an act of misrepresentation? 

The question is how correct one can be as far as ‘true’ representations are concerned? How does one test the ‘truth’ of it? Where does one draw the line demarcating the limits of ‘truth’ in representations? One common source of ‘truthful representation’ is the life around us. The people we meet and interact with, the events we witness. We do meet a Hindu thief or a Muslim mad man or a Christian money lender. If every community contains every type, why can’t one represent these categories? Certainly the issue is not one of one-off representations. The custodians of representations will vouch that they take cudgels on behalf of causes when they realize that a certain kind of label begins to stick to a group when the members of a group are slotted time and again into one customary type. 

 

It is worth inquiring how true these thoughts are. If I am a teacher and if I repeatedly come across teachers being made the butt of ridicule in media discourse, does it take the truth out of the fact that there are a good number of teachers who are worth the treatment? Will it make me feel low? Will I draw the conclusion that me too is being made fun off? How about the fact that labeling certain categories into certain fixed representations is to some extent a result of certain tendencies repeatedly evidenced ? One can certainly vouch for the fact that no group should be type cast. But will that steal the virtue out of the group? Even when a group of people in a community are portrayed as evil, will it make the world to brand the community as symbolizing that evil? Don’t we interact with a world in which such categorizations are happily demolished?

Politicians are often type cast as unreliable. For sure there are a good number of them who invited this label upon them with genuine show of unreliability. They are often (more often than not) painted as corrupt. But the taintedness which the tribe has to come to bear around their shoulders is increasingly certified by the ceaseless revelations of scams and kickbacks. But does it take anything away from the likes of the minister for Defense A. K. Antony and his kind who are clean in all sense? Will anyone call the current CAG Vinod Rai inefficient despite the tag of bureaucratic inefficiency that is a stock feature of the way administrations are often represented ? And aren’t there plenty of such members of these tribes who, against the drift of such representations, hold on otherwise? 

Intellectually speaking, representation is a theme, a term which carries a broad spectrum of meanings on its back. From ‘image’ and ‘appearance’, it grows to ‘expostulation’ and ‘substitution’. If someone like Edward Said would argue that representations can never be exactly realistic, (‘not a delivered presence, but a re-presence’ -  Said states in the context of written representations), Spivak mentions a kind of representation which is ‘stepping in some one’s place’ which is to be differed from a kind of representation which is ‘proxy’. A common call of revolt against a book or a structure or a movie may not be built on a theory manual or an ideological principle. It is often the rabble’s call to rouse a rampant reaction. And a rabble psychology is easily satisfied in igniting hints into screams and possible pointers to acidic conclusions. 

People are represented in art and literature as individuals. Despite the group tangent that may be deliberately or unwittingly implied, a representation is as much about individuals as it (could be) about groups. Then why are they taken as talking or acting for a group? Why can’t we take a rogue poet when the breed called rogue poets exist even though all poets are not rogue ? What is wrong with representing a police man as biased since biased policemen exist? Will these affect the majority? 

It may be laughed off but had the animals the power to respond legally, what would be their reactions to our representations of the animals in different media? A talking animal would be an act of crass misrepresentation like non-acting politician, right? 

What is a true cat? What is the viswaroopam of a cat?