The Danger of Memesis - Essay Example

What is mimesis and why has it been seen as a danger? It is often said that you can never reinvent the wheel, but you can improvise. If that is tohold true, then one can also argue, that you can never reinvent nature or for that matter any work of art, as perfectly as its original creator. Mimes has been defined by Britannica Online as “imitation though in the sense of representation’ rather than of ‘copying.’” Medically, it is being defined as “the appearance of symptoms of a disease in someone who doesnt have the disease, often caused by hysteria.”1 This debate however, of whatever mimesis is a danger or not is not so old. It is an argument that has captivated mankind for a thousand years and occupied even the likes of Socrates and Plato. For the Greeks the answer was a yes. Their view was simply that you can never re-create what is real, thus reducing the status of arts as simply that of creating “appearances.” Although they understood the fact, that as a sign of his superiority it was innate in humans to create and to imitate, and it is through this very process that he is able to learn, but still their creation can never reach the mark that has been set in the “World of Ideas”. Socrates defined this phenomenon in the following example of three beds: One, the creation of God, second the creation of a carpenter and the third the creation of an artist. The creation of the artist and that of the carpenter would be mere imitation of the original idea by God, and thus they would never be able to convey the beauty of the original ideal. Not only that but the bed by the artist will be twice as far from the truth, and thus twice as imperfect. Plato goes on to suggest that any work of art, be it by a poet or a rhetoric are simply works done under the influence of “Divine Madness” or Inspiration, therefore they would never have the capability to tell the truth, but they simply hold the power to seduce the person, due to the rhetoric talents the person might possess2. He explained this phenomenon with his “Simile of the Cave” in which even when a man discovers the “world of ideas”, he is not able to persuade the others of its existence, and thus loses his life despite discovering the truth behind this “world of shadows”. He implies with this example again his point that the “world of shadows” or mimesis of truth has the power to seduce us3. His belief simply was that reality is divided into two regions; one being the world of senses that can only be understood by the imperfect senses, and the other being the world of ideas of which we can only gain knowledge through the use of our reason. For the Greeks, the world was a very different place from the one that we are living in today. Theater and Narration were a mean of distributing knowledge, and required the use of senses, to see, and hear what was being acted out as a version of a far-flung reality from which they can easily isolate themselves. It was this way of the conveying of knowledge that the philosophers were against. For them, it was almost like they have been spell-bounded into this “flowing” world of reality and limiting them from discovering what is true and real and permanent, all at the same time. For this very reason, the narrators and the performers did not have any place in his Utopian World which was an extension of the “World of Ideas.” Even in the realm of Justice and Law, it has been criticized that many of the theorists have leaned towards the Aristotelian system of philosophy by mixing the reality with that of the Ideal world, in which they try to stress the perfection of that world, and to imply those principles in this world. Aristotle however differed from the views of his predecessors, by arguing that the act of imitating is a basic thing to all humans, and a mean of expressing themselves. And it is also through the act of mimesis that we can truly learn about nature itself. Mimesis gained the status of being a fundamental right – a privilege that embedded in the process of creativity that was only granted to humans and the Gods. So then why should mimesis be defined as a danger? The danger lies in not understanding the perception of reality from where a work of art is coming from4. To understand a piece of literature or a piece of prose then it is essential first of all to understand the background of the reality from where he is coming. Theaters and literature, if considered to be a mimesis of reality, then one has to know why they are writing what they are writing. What is it that their reality has presented to them that they have decided to write a piece in this way? One would have to know under what type of seduction did George Orwell wrote “The Animal Farm5.” Was it his own experience of the political systems that he sought to discuss in his book? Was it simply a fragment of his imagination? Or was it simply propaganda that he wanted to spread against a political theory? It is this lack of check into the background of a subject that can make mimesis a very dangerous thing for an individual, who does not even try to leave his couch to go and discover the reality that is sitting outside his door. He is being surrounded by such a wide range of shades of realities that seem to be everywhere, from our desktops to our magazines. He takes all this as his reality and does not even bother to discover something beyond to what is presented to him. To assume that a replica of Mona Lisa is just as good as the real thing would be an absurd conclusion on the part of our rationale. Mimesis has also been the death of many a cultures that had raised the status of some other cultures to God. Examples of this would be the tribe of Cuna, which adopted the ways of the white people and have thus resulted in destroying their own culture and ways6. This fact becomes increasingly more apparent with the advent of globalization, where through the mass-media people are quickly becoming influenced by the ways of other cultures. Globalization has changed beliefs and ways through which man is able to decipher wholly different manifestations – a fact that has been openly advocated upon and against by the proponents, critics and so on and so forth in the same field of arts, sciences and politics7. Globalization is here to stay, and stay it should as it has literally stirred the most basic foundations on which this world had stood for, for so long. The beliefs started to shape up and hence the ideologies got a new shape for their own selves. But there have been strong disagreements with the Aristotelian framework of Mimesis. Anti-mimesis has emerged as a critique of this very philosophy. Oscar Wilde argued in his article “the Decay of Lying” that it is in a fact art that has taught people what to see in this reality. For his argument he gives an example of the fogs that surround London and even despite it people are able to see the “wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and turning houses into shadows” simply because the “poets and the painters have taught (people) the loveliness of such effects.” He goes on to claim that "They did not exist till Art had invented them." It then can be argued that for Oscar Wilde it is art that is the ultimate reality that brings into focus the world that we live in, but for the Greeks it was the “world of ideas” that was the reality, and every thing else was a distraction or an imitation of that world and it did not even come close to expressing the beauty of what lied in that world. For them, their version of reality is the ultimate truth8. And it is for us to decide for ourselves what is real and holds absolute truth. Thus in the end it would be appropriate to suggest that no matter how many authors, poets and writers said one thing or the other related with mimesis, the element of danger remains firmly attached with it on a number of different occasions and in varied capacities9. There is reason enough to believe such a practice as has been the norm for so long now. Mimesis is able to turn heads and make people comprehend what is essentially an art form, putting the likes of Socrates and Plato in a twist. This is one of the reasons why mimesis is seen as something that holds potential value right from the onset. References Diamond, E. (1997). Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater. Routledge Kronick, J. (1993). Resembling Pound: Mimesis, Translation, Ideology. Criticism, Vol. 35 Lodge, R. (1953). Platos Theory of Art. Routledge Long, C. (2006). Saving Ta Legomena: Aristotle and the History of Philosophy. The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 60 Orwell, G. (1972). The Animal Farm. Heinemann Educational Publishers Plato & Jowett, B (1941). Platos The Republic. New York: The Modern Library Wilcher, R. (2007). Refiguring Mimesis: Representation in Early Modern Literature. The Modern Language Review, Vol. 102 Wilde, O. The Decay of Lying Wincklemann, J. (1765). Expression in Reflections on the painting and Sculpture of the Greeks Read More