Realism in international relations denotes that world politics is driven by competitive self-interest. Media, on the other hand, is governed by realism that denotes ethical representation, which should never be driven by self-interest. What you do, for the self is a biased adaptation of reality, and reality on camera is fiction, not a fact. “The camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses… Only that which narrates can make us understand”, said internationally-acclaimed ace photographer Susan Sontag.
The camera, when it’d come into the hands of the few, must have been used to capture the truth. Realism in art refers to the depiction of truth. But depiction is not real and the truth, not universal. The constant up-gradation of camera and evolution of technology has led to the portrayal of a glossy fact, what may be a ‘fiction’ in reality. Why what is not shown, justifies for selective transparency?
This reminds me of how half-truth is more dangerous than a lie. Your everyday reality, your truth of being, dilutes when it is on camera. As a pen is for a writer, a camera is for a cinematographer. You read the page they opens for you, but did you know what the previous chapter talked about? The wholeness of truth comes from detached ethnographic participation.
Indie filmmakers and documentary filmmakers delve into the celebration of reality and its truth, but what is on camera is fiction influenced by fact. The fiction, performed through correct repetition of reality, is, after all, an act; reality doesn’t need to be correct, and this is universal for fiction and non-fiction elements of media. You derive from facts an interesting, thrilling, romanticised fiction. When it goes the other way round, it becomes dangerous. More realistically put, this happens when a con scene from Bond movie leads to a real bankruptcy, or a murder scene in Sherlock Holmes leads to a real criminal conviction in the court of law.
It is now a well-known fact that there is an objectified representation of women in cinema and other fiction formats. Narcissism is a subset of voyeurism, which comes from a gaze that patriarchy celebrates on the grounds of valour or chivalry. How women expect to be protected from their male counterparts is disguised acceptance and further celebration of deep-rooted patriarchy. How the server hands over the bill to the man on the table presuming that he would pay for the meal the family has consumed is another instance to validate my argument.
Toned bodies, flawless skin, and the ‘right’ height is rarely real; assembling the rare and demonstrating them as the real should ideally be an exceptional event, unlike how the movies driven by successful formulae show such women to be — ordinary. Then come women wearing corsets in their sleep and make-up in their shower! This, here, is one dangerous situation where fact is influenced by fiction. This wouldn’t have been the case had heroines in cinema been not always, without infrequent exception, attractive and pretty.
Generalisation, stereotyping and homogenisation are the rounding-off of real facts. A more healthy approach to depict facts would be one which is more heterogeneous and random, even if it’s at the expense of not coming up with a consensus. In the TOI vs. Deepika Padukone case, the TOI fabricated the actress’ style of dressing to favour its argument of Padukone being a hypocrite, as opposed to fairly printing on newspaper how she is. If this bias wasn’t inherent, they wouldn’t have felt the need to tag her cleavage as ‘The Famous Cleavage’.
The staged recreation of women in cinema made to look real is always taken from an extra-ordinary characteristic; if a part of reality is not the whole fact, then it is fiction. If both fiction and non-fiction narratives could find a commonplace in media, it would be an interesting study. What I’m afraid of is whether it can happen in an individual’s life span.