The Imitation Game

The talk and criticism about imitation, copying, and mimicking have been around ever since art became a part of human civilisation. The critic works which initially focused on literature extended itself to visual art-forms like drama and cinema. The modernist age that began with the industrial revolution, propelled by the scientific boom instilled an instinct in people, to revolt against acts of plagiarism and imitation. Art was also strenuously scrutinized with the same instinct. But, Aristotle, in his book ‘Poetics’ argues that Art has an innate nature to imitate life and thereby itself, because once art imitates life, it becomes an expression of life and thereby a part of it. This essay is an attempt of commentary on the imitation of the form in visual art forms, especially Cinema and the importance of good imitation.

Imitation has always been a process of learning. We learn to walk and talk as a child, by imitation. So, we have an innate liking towards it. If we can recognize an element of imitation, we derive emotional pleasure from the experience. It positively reinforces our ability at recognition making us feel more intelligent. More often, the elements that are imitated are prone to trigger nostalgia. Nostalgia is always followed by melancholy, the gratification for which is only more nostalgia and thus we are stuck in a feedback loop. The more imitation we consume, the more we crave for them. With the dawn of the internet and social media, the content we consume on these platforms has become a commodity, and we carry these contents outside the platforms in our conversations and thoughts. Supplying the demand of the consumer is the way towards growth in a consumer-driven economy. So as the filmmaker Vettrimaran says “Cinema is a COMMERCE before its an ART”. It is no wonder filmmakers would resort to imitation as a tool to establish themselves as bankable, in their road to success in the industry.

The act of imitation can be carried out in three variations: Objects, Mode and Style. Let us try to understand these with an example. Consider the story of the ‘star-crossed lovers’ as Shakespeare would like to call them. Layla and Majnun is a 7th-century Persian poem about how two lovers die of heartbreak because their families took their societal stature too seriously. Romeo and Juliet (an English play) is a similar story written in the 16th century, followed by Devdas (a Bengali novella) in the 20th century. All three use similar Objects, i.e, similar people taking similar actions/decisions resulting in similar results. The Mode through which these characters perform their actions is similar too. Layla is refused to Majnun, because of the class division between the two families, and also because Majnun(which means ‘crazy’) is considered a lunatic because he converses with Layla through poems and songs. Romeo and Juliet have a family feud that is further fueled by their association leading to a casualty on each side. Parvati is refused to Devdas because of long-standing traditions. This leaves us with Style. Style is where all three are different and stand out. Majnun uses his words, the poetry to win his lady and when losing her descends into madness; Romeo fights his right to Juliet and both take their own lives in shock, hearing about the others’ death and Devdas descends into vice and a slow death to endure the pain of the loss. If the later works were just mere replications of the precursor without any deviance in style, they would have been nothing more than mere recurrences in time. So, in a way, STYLE IS SUBSTANCE, and it the most common form of imitation. Yet, other combinations of the elements of imitation can be used to achieve interesting results. Some of the most common combinations are discussed below with suitable examples from the Tamil cinema industry.

Case Study 1: Atlee Kumar ( Objects & Mode — Same, Style — Differs )

With a very lean but financially successful directorial filmography of just 4 films, Atlee has risen to be a bankable filmmaker, with heavy speculations around the originality of his content, showcasing striking similarities in the plotline with yesteryear cult films. Instead of trying to criticize the man, we shall try to examine his works. For the sake of commentary, let us assume that all his works to be artistic imitations. With Raja-Rani, Atlee uses the same objects and mode but employs his style to the film. There was a structure to the film and every character had an arc. So the film worked on all domains. But with his subsequent films, he was more into molding short-lived experiences rather than to create engagement with the plot. He could have tried to improve where the originals lacked but rather chose to spice up the film with (quite literally) breathtaking political and social dialogue, yearning for that momentary excitement among the audience. This creates discontinuity. Thus, it is evident that even-though STYLE IS SUBSTANCE, the product should be true to its form, i.e, storytelling. I hope that director Atlee realizes the potential in his technique of pastiche to make better cinema.

Case Study 2: The Policeman Trilogy (Actually A Quartet) by Gautam Vasudev Menon (Objects & Style — Same, Mode — Differs)

A collage of Gautam Menon's films.

If one word could define the man, it would be Style. From the voice-overs to his strong urban, classy women characters, the man has clearly defined his style, out of which we the consumers refuse to come. GVM is a one-of-a-kind imitator; he imitates himself. This is evident in his trilogy on the life of a police-man at different stages in life. Upon examination, you would end up with a simple plotline. An uncompromising idealist, with friends and parents you wished you had, falls in love with a woman, who is everything he is not. He gets into trouble with someone who goes against his morals which affects his woman. And Oh! The things he does for love! Here, the objects and the style remain the same, but the mode is the one he gets to play with. This is a very interesting way to approach imitation in visual art-forms. Since the medium changes how the characters behave and talk, it becomes very difficult to identify the imitation. Yet, after a certain number of such experiments, recurrence becomes so obvious. This form of imitation is bound to fail in the long-run.

Case Study 3: Thalapathi (1991) by Mani Ratnam (Objects — Same, Mode & Style — Differs)

This is probably the best example of the art of perfect imitation. Thalapathi is based on the story of Karnan, from the epic Mahabharatham. So the director Mani Ratnam borrows the objects and by introducing them to relevant situations and with a perfect blend of style and great story-telling, he creates something unique, something original, in imitation. This mode of imitation gives the creator the freedom to experiment with the characters/objects by placing them in an interesting situation and opens up opportunities to break out of a singular style. The variation in style will encourage the consumers to add perspective and thereby creating a sense of originality. Whenever creators borrow only the objects but work on mode and style in their attempts towards imitation, it has proved to be fruitful in sustaining its originality and has always been recognized. Director S. Balachander’s Andha Naal (1954) does something similar with Akira Kurosawa’s famed Rashomon (1950). For an even more relevant and recent example, the YouTube sensation, Alexander Babu’s musically humorous solo stand-up show Alex in Wonderland is nothing short of pure genius in striving for originality in imitation. He imitates almost every musician from the history of the Tamil cinema industry. Some people even complained about the show as ‘random guys singing songs for two hours’. What makes the show great, engaging and original is the perfect balance between the use of intertextuality, triggering nostalgia and how Alex plays around with mode by weaving great stories around every song he sings. This is mastery over the art of imitation. Originality, even in imitation, must be the ultimate motive of art. In his short essay titled, ‘the Decay of Lying’, Oscar Wilde proposes something against our common intuition, that Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life (remember, here art means cinema). How many times have you referenced cinema in your daily conversation? How many times have kids tried to imitate Shakthimaan or Superman? Most people are indifferent towards realism in art because we are tired of our lives, the repeating, boring daily routine. Our generation tends to love and care for nature, the beauty of the waterfalls and the view of the mountain range because there’s a lack of these in our mechanical urban lives. We are not interested in hearing stories that might actually happen. We would rather invest ourselves in complex and beautiful possibilities. According to Wilde, Art takes time and imagination to conceive the ideas/possibilities; life gets fascinated with Art’s product and finally, Life imitates Art. My mother remembers watching K.Balachander’s Aval Oru Thodarkathai (1974) and getting awestruck with the lead character Kavitha, who is the sole breadwinner of the family. I still see resemblances of Kavitha in my mother. She always is on time to office, cares for her family before herself and never is emotionally leaking. And there are many more instances in my life which I felt were right out of the cinema. So, if there is even a bleak possibility what Wilde proposes might be true, then we wouldn’t want Life to imitate Art which itself is a product of poor imitation. And this is why reviving the art of imitation, the art of lying is crucial. If not, all we’ll be ending up with would only be the boring, repetitive, mechanical human life. We don’t want that, do we?

References and Influences:

1. ‘Poetics’ by Aristotle

2. ‘The Anxiety of Influence’ by Harold Bloom

3. ‘The Decay of Lying’ by Oscar Wilde

4. Nerdwriter Video Essay on Intertextuality — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeAKX_0wZWY

5. Just Write Video Essay on Stranger Things — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTpsw-ufDA