Ammar Raja Project 2 Draft: Analyzing a Visual Image 22/04/2013 Denise Comer

The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger (1857) by Sir John Tenniel 840 538 pixels, file size: 216 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg

The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger

The image tries to capture the mood of British Public after they successfully quashed the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Sir John Tenniel made this picture, and it was published in Punch magazine on 22nd August 1857. Sir John Tenniel was the principal political cartoonist for Englands Punch magazine for over 50 years, and he was the artist who illustrated Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the LookingGlass. This cartoon shows the degree to which Punch and the popular press wanted vengeance against the native troops who had committed atrocities against women and children. Note how using the lion to represent England and the tiger to represent India does several things: first, it conveys the impression that the two parties are equal, which they are not. Second, it relies on a diametrical opposition of England and India, colonizer and colonized, when in fact the British were able to put down the mutiny in part because large numbers of Indian troops remained loyal. The image has three main components, first is the Lion used to represent Britain, second is the Bengali Tiger used to represent India, and finally a White Women with little kid being attacked by the Bengali Tiger is shown. The background shows some village setting in India, there is not a lot in the background. The focus of the picture is the Lion attacking the Bengali Tiger. Tinniel is trying to show that the attack on the Bengali Tiger is justified since the Bengali Tiger is attacking a White Women and a little kid.

Focus of the picture is within the frame, and if somebody would like to extrapolate the happenings with in the frame to outside the frame, it reasonable to assume that this kind of events happened on a wide scale in India, and therefore British are justified in taking the vengeance. This was a time, when great atrocities were enforced on Indians by the British after the success in the war, and this cartoon was trying to get legitimacy for those gore acts in the eyes of British public. If we research the historical context, it was Britishers who colonized India, and the main reason for this war was to take independence from the gore British rule. So Indians were the victims of British rule, therefore they retaliated. There were some instances of attack on the White Women and Kids, and were because of the ill treatment Indians from the Britishers. So Indians were taking vengeance on the British by doing this, as the British did it everyday during the Raj. So John Tinneal's cartoon is very biased, its represented the Indian atrocities after the war as vengeance, but the attack on White Women was the Indian vengeance in the first place. The text from Coyle and Colvin both emphasized that no talent is God Given, and everything depends on how much you practice with feedback in a loop. Sir John Tinneal educated himself for his career, although he became a probationer, and then a student, of the Royal Academy. So very early on in his life, he got Deep Training with proper feedback from the Royal Academy. This polished his skills, and he became one of the greatest Political Satirists and Cartoonist of his time. Punch Magazine where he was chief cartoonist provided him the opportunity to experiment with his work, and get constant feedback from public. This was kind of Coyles Deep Practice, and the settings provided by the Punch Magazine resembles some what the Coyle concept of Chicken wired Harvards. Sir John Tinneal made another cartoon Justice on the same theme. Both these cartoons showed British public that Indians were responsible for the treatment they are having from the British, thereby getting support from the British Public for the Raj's proficiencies. And the second purpose is to show that Indians are dangerous, and have to be controlled, and British are using force to do that. The final purpose is to show that vengeance has been taken from the Indians for what they had done in the Rebellion of 1857.