Jessica Birthisel | Dec. 5, 2010
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Associate professor Radhika Parameswaran's research looks at animal images used to depict China and India. Hers was the last Research Colloquium of the fall semester. |
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Associate professor Radhika Parameswaran presented her recent research, “Animalizing India: Emerging Signs of an Unruly Market,” which explores the ways India’s economy is represented through media images of animals. Her presentation was the last of the semester in the school’s Research Colloquium series.
After sharing several mainstream interpretations of India’s future economic forecast, Parameswaran explained the various discourses surrounding the country’s transitions.
The country has at times been considered to be a defiant, non-aligned, overpopulated, third world nation with socialist leanings. Today, however, India is recognized as a pro-America rising power with a more capitalist and consumerist orientation and a healthier population, she said.
Parameswaran’s larger project explores images of India in transition over the last two decades, particularly in magazine and nonfiction book covers. Wednesday’s presentation looked at what she calls a “bestial embodiment of national identity,” or how India as an economy is visually represented through animal images.
Her theoretical lenses include nation branding, cultural anthropology and animal cultural studies.
“While some of these animals signify India’s strength, some of them do not. Some of them show weakness,” said Parameswaran, explaining that this results in ambivalent perceptions of the country and its economic potential.
Her first category of findings, which she calls “feline nation,” showcased India’s economy as represented by tiger images. Her earliest example of a tiger representing India as a nation came from a 1995 cover of The Economist. It featured a photograph of a tiger emerging from the darkness, something Parameswaran believed to symbolize the accompanying article’s take on India’s transition from “socialist darkness” to the light of a modernity.
In another example, the tiger was represented as a cartoon, a scared and immobilized tiger with his tail on fire. She likened this image to a cross between Henri Rousseau’s famous painting, “Tiger in a Tropical Storm,” and Disney’s portrayal of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book, with neither famous tiger portraying strength or leadership.
Parameswaran also gave examples of the “tiger nation in captivity,” images of caged tigers that she said symbolized the state’s constraints on private enterprise. In contrast, other examples of a less-timid tiger nation use techno and consumerist references to suggest India is moving forward with purpose toward a clear goal.
Parameswaran also found a variety of images symbolizing India as an elephant, a category she refers to as a “peaceful and passive pachyderm nation.” Many of these images portrayed a historical and decorated elephant signifying the greatness of India’s past, said Parameswaran. The narrative behind these images could be interpreted as: “Here’s a great civilization. It died. It’s coming back.” These images also carry traces of colonialism.
Other elephant images of India suggest crumbling or battered elephants in trouble and raw or natural elephants that suggest a slow and lumbering progress, especially in comparison to the speed of the tiger.
She also studied what she calls “conjugal animals,” or animal images that couple nations, particularly China and India. Many economists see the two countries as the prime rising economies to watch and invest in.
“It’s almost like gambling: Which country should America go with?” Parameswaran said. Economic factors considered in these gambles include differences in the countries’ political systems, population growth and management, infrastructure development and media systems.
In these animal illustrations of the countries, India is usually the tiger and China is almost always the dragon.
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| Parameswaran referred to this photo from The Economist that shows China depicted as a dragon (left) and India as a tiger for her talk about animal images and emerging markets. |
This reality is in stark opposition to the tiger, which may appear strong, Parameswaran said, but is actually one of the most fragile species in the world today. The fate of the elephant is not much better.
“So when considering the hierarchies of animal nations,” she explained as she showcased a variety of examples of the dragon and the tiger, “it appears the dragon has the edge.”
In addition to the images juxtaposed, she often found the dragon and the tiger fighting. In August, The Economist featured a cover photo of two muscular male arms wrestling. One arm featured a dragon tattoo and the other featured a tiger tattoo. The headline read, “China and India: Contest of the Century.”
In October, Parameswaran found The Economist, a recurring magazine in her sample, placed its bet on India. Its cover image featured a tiger sprinting so quickly that even the stripes on its back are slightly blurred. The cover reads, “How India's growth will outpace China's.”
“What’s missing is the image of the dragon,” she said. “We can imagine the dragon far off the page, plodding along behind the tiger.”
Parameswaran finished her presentation with several other images of other animal images used to represent India’s economy, including the snake and the peacock. She talked about illustrations in the Wall Street Journal that focus on exoticism and adventure (a la Indiana Jones, said Parameswaran). Finally, several texts used images of beautiful Indian women to represent the country.
Journalism graduate student Tang Shuo, whom Parameswaran thanked at the start of the presentation for his insights into the symbolism of dragons in Chinese culture, attended the colloquium. He described Parameswaran’s analysis as systematic and said he especially liked her comparison between animal imagery of China and India.
“Media research of developing countries seldom do a comparison between rising powers like China and India,” said Tang Shuo. “Her images form a very illustrative and clarified representation of the relationship in the eyes of the Westerners.”
As a Chinese student, he said the presentation made him think about animal images of nations that appear in domestic and Western media, predicting this could be an important perspective in his future research.
The School of Journalism Research Colloquium Series gives scholars a venue for presenting their work to colleagues. The series will return in spring semester.
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