Research Methods and Academic Writing I Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

5301
MA ADS
Spring, 2015

Instructor
Aisha Abid Hussain When Mola Jutt Became
Word count
Superman…
9,725

Understanding the popular and borrowed material in visual

culture of Lahore

Mahbub Jokhio
MA ADS
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Research Question outline:

How our collective understanding of a visual culture is heavily relied upon popular media

(visual or verbal); and how this whole idea of appropriating the found iconic material adds

to the authorship of a new contemporary visual/virtual culture in Lahore?

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Acknowledgments

I am extremely thankful and indebted to my tutor Aisha Abid Hussain for sharing expertise, and sincerest
and valuable guidance and encouragement extended to me. I would like to take this opportunity to express
gratitude to one of my favorite artist and educator Farida Batool, for contributing generously to this paper,
without whom it would had not been possible.

My most sincere thank you to an amazing person my father Altaf Jokhio, for training me to be critical and
making me familiarized with academic research at an early age.
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Abstract:

Living in a fast moving times and visuals all around, where no visual remains for long,

and keeps on changing and moving; the concept of visual culture is also at ever pacing

modification. As a society is always open to modifications through cross-cultural

interactions, its visual culture is too. Living in a post-colonial Lahore; the local sensibilities,

foreign adaptations and sometimes appropriations appear distinct and noticeable in

variety of genres and in natures ranging from cartoons to commercials and religious

imagery to Lollywood films. One of the prime question this paper is inquiring is to find and

locate the processes and practices that drive the borrowed imagery in Lahore’s visual

culture; what meanings and connotation are regenerated; what ideologies are being

made/conveyed and how does this reflect a new visual culture.

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Table of Contents:

List of Figures

1: Introduction
1. 1 Defining Visual Culture and other terms…
1. 2 Lahore: Running images and Standing words
1. 3 Seeing Lahore from Lollywood to KFC and back

2: Literature Review
2. 1 From Elkins to Mitchell and Rampley to Rucker
2. 2 From Bazaar to Mazaar and back home

4: Methodology
4. 1 Research Design

5: Interview
The keen observant (Interview)

6: Conclusion
Lost in Lahore, finding a way home

Bibliography
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List of Figures

Figure 1 Two film hoardings, Lakshmi chowk, Lahore, 2006, Source: Mazaar,
Bazaar.

Figure 2 Ek Gunah aur sahi (Film poster), Source:

http://www.dawn.com/news/694239/also -pakistan-2

Figure 3 Avengers movie poster, Lahore, Source:

http://onlyinpakistan.com/post/22899362725/mehreenkasana-the-
avengers-screening-in

Figure 4 Rikshaw Back (cropped), Source: http://pakbee.com/2009/11/rickshaw-

wisdom-solve-the-mystery/

Figure 5 Mohan Das, Mona Lisa in Sindh’ acrylic on canvas. Photo Courtesy Koel
Gallery, Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/697495/together-we-shine-
shared-roots-splintered-paths/

Figure 6 Rikshaw Back, Source: http://www.parhlo.com/why-do-i-love-my-pakistan-

its-simpler than-you-think/

Figure 7 McDonalds in Pakistan, Source:

https://www.pinterest.com/jameggandchips/pakistani-food/

Figure 8 Sunsilk Ad on Metro Bus, Source: From image collection of the Author
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Figure 9 Beauty Girl cold cream, Source: From image collection of the Author

Figure 10 Garbage truck and American Icon, Source:

https://righttoricochet.wordpress.com/category/witty-humorous/

Figure 11 Superman Pakistan flag logo, Source:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Superman-Pakistan-flag-logo-Cool-Pakistani-

Cricket-sports-fan-t-shirt-/201026093000

Figure 12 Film Still, Source: http://amazingorfunny.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/karachi-

se-lahore-trailer-pakistani-film.html

Figure 13 Osama in Truck Art, Source:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/07/08/osama_bin_laden_report_

accuses_pakistan_of_incompetence.html

Figure 14 Truck Art, Source:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=99418842
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Figure 15 Mickey mouse on Pakistan flag, Source:

https://shahidul.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/joining-the-old-boys-club/

Figure 16 Cityscape representing a notion of European cities, Image courtesy

Malcolm Hutcheson, Source: Mazaar, Bazaar.

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Introduction

The relationship of visuals with humans is as ancient as the history of mankind. From the

time living in caves to times living in cyber world, the man has always been surrounded

by visuals. Even before encountering with the words, one embraces the understanding of

this world through images. These images connected through a complex system of visuals,

shape our living and communication as means of survival in a society. Society which is a

visual phenomenon of variety of representations ranging from cultural customs, traditional

livings and everyday activities connected to and of man. Visuals which one encounters at

the very earliest of one’s birth, always change its content with time. For example for a

new born baby a cloud might not been read as a cloud but as an interesting composition

of white, yellow and light blue colors. And with growing time as he would had learnt to

know of that composition as cloud, he would had different connotations attached to it than

as of the later age. This modification in terms of evolution of one’s understanding and

sensibility cause a drastic change in a society in form of an individual contribution. Society

which is the product sum of its innate individual experiences and expressions; in response

give birth to a culture or to say that individual contributions of experiences and

expressions when practiced frequently, give rise to a characterization of a society. Those

experiences and expressions are always stimulated by certain beliefs, values and

behavior; and manifested largely in forms of arts, customs, and many kinds of other
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representations. As briefly stated earlier, the faculty of sensual and rational mind is always

in the state of being/modification, the society’s culture is too; and as one is always

connected to outer world surrounded him/her and continuously in dialogue with it, a

certain culture is as well. A culture happens to exist at ever going cross-communication

between other cultures; which through a dialogue sometimes exchange few things.

Among those exchanges the one of certain visual representations is the strongest one.

Cultures so often adapt and appropriate each other’s objects, visuals and symbols in

order to share a cross-cultural interaction, which always give birth to newer contents and

meanings. Visual culture of certain territory, like its culture being an antithesis to

civilization heavily relies and relates to that context of particular social territory. As a

society’s culture and tradition is always open to additions and modifications within and

cross-cultural interactions time to time, its visual culture too is always and continues to be

in a flux.

Living in a post-colonial Lahore, the images and visuals around unlike any of the cultures,

holds a rural and local culture and foreign adaptations and appropriations too. These

adaptations and sometimes appropriations appear distinct and noticeable in variety of

genres and in natures ranging from cartoons to commercials and religious imagery to

Lollywood films. But Before going to search and locate for those circumstances and

grounds on which this cross-cultural interaction of exchanging visuals happens, and what

political and social ideologies are being transferred through the adaptation of certain icons

and popular visuals; let’s briefly discuss some important terms frequently to be used in

this paper.
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1.1 Defining visual culture and other terms…

Something is left over when one says “ideology” and something is not present when one says “culture”. Stewart Hall

Visual culture

When defining visual culture we have to look for culture first. As William Raymond

said for culture being 'one of the two or three most complicated words in the English

language'. (William Raymond) The word Culture suggests ‘a particular way of life, whether

of a people, a period or a group’.1 So visual culture deals with the visuals and their

understanding. Our theoretical understanding of the visuals to its basic is situated on the

grounds of our culture, that is to say that its very understanding is directly associated with

the life and environment of a certain place, time and culture that inhabits us. There is no

cultural practice that is entirely visual. ‘All cultural practices function using a variety of

means, involving visual perception and communication, but also others, such as hearing,

language, bodily and tactile experience, and taste.’2 When talking about visual culture as

1 Wiliam Raymond. Keywords. (London: Fontana 1983), 87.

2MatthewRampley. "Introduction." In Exploring visual cultures: Definations, concepts and contexts, edited
by Rampley, Matthew (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 2.
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a term one assumes that it involves visuals and the act of looking, but ‘on closer

inspection, to involve the other senses (especially touch and hearing)’3 is undeniable in

medias like Film, Theatre, Performance art, video art etc.; so here in order to form a

mutual understanding regarding the explanation of visual culture and knowing the

impossibility of making a discourse of everything; we have to limit this subject to visuals

only.

‘Perhaps the major claim represented by the term visual culture as it is used by

many scholars today is that this description is not only linguistic or textual but also visual.’4

To say that humans construct a world of representations in form of visuals. And when

talking about visual culture, one encounters a major question that how a visual culture

depicts a world of our expressions, cultural rituals, communicative modes and everyday

happenings? We have to wait for that question to be answered; but having said that visual

culture being the subfield of art history refers to the ‘images and objects that deploy

particular ways of seeing and therefore contribute to the social, intellectual, and

perceptual construction of reality.’5 reality which is a subjective term and happens to be

in the present tense in its true sense, many scholars come to agreement on defining visual

culture as being only contemporary.

3W.J.T. Mitchell, “There are no visual media” Journal of Visual Culture vol. 4 no. 2, 3. Accessed May 08,
2015. doi: 10.1177/1470412905054673
4David Morgan, The sacred gaze: religious visual culture in theory and practice (London: University of
California Press, 2005), 3.
5 Ibid
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Popular culture

In the times, where majority of images one encounters happen to be in forms of

magazines’ photographs, in mass produced technologies like TVs, internet channels,

cinemas and a whole new tradition of representations in countless forms; some visuals

appear to be seen frequently. This frequently appearance of certain visuals is caused by

the mass production and due to their everywhere-availability they take the status of

popular.

Ideology, when discussing popular culture is as much necessary as to define

culture; because it encompasses the whole ground on which popular culture is based and

that is politics. Due to political forces and ideologies of power visual cultural practices

sometimes present distorted images of reality, that distortion appear to be in favor of

envying as compared to envied. The notion of power plays a vital role in determination of

popular culture. As Bennett says:

‘The field of popular culture is structured by the attempt of the ruling class to win

hegemony and by forms of opposition to this endeavor. As such, it consists not simply of

an imposed mass culture that is coincident with dominant ideology, nor simply of

spontaneously oppositional cultures, but is rather an area of negotiation. Between the two

within which-in different particular types of popular culture-dominant, subordinate and

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oppositional cultural and ideological values and elements are ‘mixed’ in different

permutation.’6

That is to say that popular culture is profoundly a political concept in terms of ideology;

how this political manipulation takes place within a certain context of area and its visual culture?,

that depends upon the contexts and interests of the state and the author (This question will be

discussed in detail in the final chapter). Another most prominent and visible question that arise is

of that authorship that largely has been overlooked or put into words like‘…The most prominent

of these is anonymity that is lack of “authorial presence” or a “centered sense of personal

identity.”7 To inquire for its authorship and locate the political influence and manipulation behind

this phenomenon can be argued by proposing that popular culture happens to be for masses and

it does not need any authorship to acknowledge (When one thing is proposed for masses with

the intention of including a property of being embraced by everyone then to acknowledge the

authorship does not matter that much. Because when we say people, it doesn’t mean a single

person, rather a diverse sum of different ethnical and social groups. These groups despite the

fact being different in terms of classes, values, cultures share a common faculty that is to look).

And if popular culture inflicted by the political derive (as suggested by many

scholars) generates certain images that float frequent enough to break the borders and

travel miles, it creates Icons.

6Tony Bennett, ‘Popular culture and the turn to Gramsci,’ in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader,
2nd edn, edited by Storey, John (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, 1998), 221.

7Sylvia Harrison, Pop art and the origins of post-modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2003), 20.
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Icon

‘For generations, art history as a discipline was dominated by the study of

iconography and style’8, and thus has inherited this sensibility of looking and making for

icons and styles. Icons in variety of media, invoke certain cultural symbolic values. To

deal with icons is to deal with certain culture and its very context in order to form a basic

criteria for evaluation of icons. lexically, Icons from being ‘a painting of holy person that

is also regarded holy’ to being ‘a person or thing that is seen as a symbol of something’

has traveled a long way for its modification in meaning; which is to say that meaning of

certain terms varies with time and allow modifications in. In that process of modification,

one of the prime catalyst is cross-cultural interaction. Cross-cultural interaction that by its

very definition deals with the interaction of two or more cultures with each other. That

interaction between cultures, happen to be in many forms of exchanges, adaptations and

appropriations of certain symbols, visuals and objects. But what does it mean to adapt

and to appropriate?

Appropriation

Lexically, the term appropriation is defined as ‘take something for your own use without

permission.’ ‘Appropriation, a term that here denotes the re-use of already-existing,

8David Morgan, The sacred gaze: religious visual culture in theory and practice (London: University of
California Press, 2005), 45.
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already-authored cultural matter, and its incorporation in new works.’9 We will discuss this

term at length in the later chapter when going through the literature review.

1.2 Lahore: Running images and Standing words

“Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New
York, layered like a sedimentary plain with the accreted history of invaders from the Aryans to the Mongols to the
British.”

― Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Lahore has two faces, the old and the new. The old city till today gives the vibrancy and

nostalgic ecstasy of its past glorious heritage and the new city appears to be in the race

of fast pacing modernity. Despite all, the city is considered to be one of the culturally rich

site of many heritage spots ranging from Badshahi Mosque to Shalamar Bagh and from

Yaadgaar10 to Lahore fort. ‘Lahore is second largest city of Pakistan and considered to

be one of the ancient cities of the world. According to some historians, Lahore city was

developed in 1st century A.D.’11 ‘other historian link the history as early as the times of

the Rama, the hero of the famous epic the Ramayana.’12 ‘The British came from 1849 to

9
Martin Zielinger, "What appropriation? Why appropriation? How appropriation? In Arts and Politics of
Appropriation” (PhD diss., Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto, 2009), 27.
10 Minaar e Pakistan, Lahore.
11
S. M. Latif, Tarikh-e-Punjab (History of Punjab, 1883) (Lahore: Book Talk Publishers, 2002), 217.
12 Z. Ahmed, Lahore and the Punjab vol I (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1982), 116.
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1947, and they greatly improved the ruined state of Lahore. Since then Lahore has begun

to leap towards modernity while keeping harmony with its glorious heritage.’13 And after

the partition 1947, a very great deal of modification happened in aftermaths of post-

colonial happenings. Lahore has been under the rule of many governments and

kingships of various invading forces of variety of cultures. It is assumed here as a

hypothesis that those all invaders from their culture did bring some things which were

inherited to the Lahore. Lahore in its life, has gone through so many modifications and

additions from various ethnic, cultural and traditional forces beyond its border. And

because of that the communication system of Lahore has always been influenced and

inflicted by forces outside its borders, for example languages (Language as

communication tool, much like visuals) spoken in Lahore. ‘Lahoris do not think about it,

but these languages came to be used in Lahore through forces from beyond its borders.

These forces continue to affect the domains in which the languages are used…’ 14 Urdu

for example did not existed before 1849, until the British introduced it as the important

among its geographical significance. And ‘The objectives expressed by the British, of

establishing a class of Urdu-speaking elite, can be seen in fulfillment today. The vision of

the British administration in the Punjab was to cultivate Urdu as the language of a cultured

class.”15 One can see the influence of colonial forces behind the shaping of

communication system of Lahore. Urdu replacing a major part of Punjabi (The local

language of Lahore) language’s use in daily life, was adapted more quickly just for the

13 S. Mubin at el. Mughal Gardens in The City of Lahore – A Case Study Of Shalimar Garden, Pakistan
Journal of Science (Vol. 65 No. 4 December, 2013), 512, Accessed om May 02, 2015.
14 Celeste Sullivan, ‘The Language Culture of Lahore’ (PhD diss., Department of Anthropology Brown

University, 2005), 115.

15 Ibid.,
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reason of “Urdu as the language of a cultured class”. And replacements like these also

happened and continues to happen in the visual culture of Lahore as well.

1.3 seeing Lahore from Lollywood to KFC and back

'If someone has not seen Lahore, it means he has not born yet.' -A local saying

Lahore is said to be the city of lights. Light which enables things and objects to be visible,

has made Lahore a city of wonders and colorful visuals too through the ages. The

(contemporary) visual culture of Lahore due to its rich cultural heritage have also

incorporated other forces beyond its border to be partial constituent of it. The visuals

ranging from streets to home walls, from huge billboards to chae-wala16 shops, and from

rickshaws’ backs to mosques have a largest number of floating visuals; which one

encounter in an everyday life. In Lahore, from watching English channels in homes to

surfing pornographic sites at local cafes and from seeing Islamic calligraphy on almost

every home’s entrance to registering the politicians’ campaign advertisements; there is a

huge number of type of visuals. The cultural architecture of Lahore and the newly adapted

modern architecture when blended together creates a new visual among the former and

later. And when inquiring about the visual culture and its very adaptation and

16
Tea Shops
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appropriation from the Other, we have to shortlist certain visuals which would represent

the subject justifiably. As mentioned earlier that we cannot focus our research on

everything rather selecting standard ones and talk on behalf of them as representatives.

The Lollywood film hand posters have remain popular all over the city, until their

replacement with the digital Pena flex. This image shows both types of posters and shows

the drastic change in the sensibility of

portraying and representing the figures from

hand painted to digital one. Nevertheless the

painted posters has an inbuilt sensibility of

image making that is of this part of the world

and has a strong history.

Even this traditional way of painting the posters

some time borrowed themes and compositional

devices from the west. Film being a borrowed

Figure 1 medium, did also brought western sensibilities

along with it, which can be found in a film poster of 70s.

‘This brand of whiskey (according to late filmmaker

and cinema historian, Mushtaq Gazdar), appeared in

hundreds of Pakistani films between 1950s and late

1970s.’17 This was an imported brand of whiskey ‘vat 69’,

Figure 2

Nadeem F. Paracha, “Also Pakistan” in Dawn News Paper, Published Feb 09, 2012 06:12PM.
17

Accessed May 15, 2015, http://www.dawn.com/news/694239/also -pakistan-2.

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and one could find it everywhere in the clubs until they were banned Zia’s government in

1977. For directors to show this iconic brand of whiskey was the symbol of dropping off

the pain and was considered for a good person ‘whereas other brands were used if a ‘bad

person’ was shown having a shot or two.’18 The portraiture of women is very much

westernize and transcends western ideology towards woman and portraying woman.

Where it appropriated foreign sensibilities and iconic materials, one can find

foreign images treated within the traditional style as more recently in this image which

shows famous Hollywood movie poster painted in popular style of Pakistani Poster

painting.

Figure 3

One of the popular imagery in Lahore’s visual

culture is of Rickshaw Art. Rickshaw art too has been

appropriating and adapting foreign visuals and iconic

texts. (In Figure 4) An Urdu transliteration of English word

Figure 4

18
Ibid.,
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‘Fantastic’ is written with a little intervention by replacing the letters back and forth. The

new word generates a very much local and rural (Exclamation) idiom with westernize

sensibility.

The rickshaws play an important role as visual transcenders in the city and is often

used for political and other campaigns, public messages and advertisement promotions;

and inevitably contributing to Lahore’s visual culture enormously. And so often, one can

find comical and serious texts and visuals on the back of Rickshaws’. The use of popular

and iconic visuals from the west is appropriated in the figure 5. Here artist uses the iconic

western painting image with the eastern traditional iconic symbols rendered in Rickshaw

art, where as in figure 6, a western sitcom dialogue is written along with Urdu text.

Figure 5 Figure

Western brands of products one can find in variety of shopping malls across the

city. Their popularity can also be seen from the images where a finger chips road shop is

using the trademark logo of the famous American brand, or a foreign advertisement

poster of international brand printed on local metro bus.

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Figure 6 Figure 7

One can find wetern standards of

avertisemnet and portrayel of

women in cosmetic product

advertisements. This billboard

Figure 8
shows a local cold cream Beauty Girl

written in urdu transliteration too along with the a portrait of foreign woman.

The American Icons can be seen in variety of local contexts ranging from cheap

stickers to toffee wrappers and from street walls to vehicles. In figure 10, the American

iconic image is stickered on local garbage truck. In figure 11, A Superhero logo is

appropriated in a way to make it Pakistani by putting the symbolic elements from the

country’s flag. The ideology of heroes is adapted in the figure 12, showing a man wearing

sunglasses of fake copies of International brand and posing in heroic way.

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Figure 9

Figure 10 Figure 11
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Figure 12 A truck back showing the iconic and

popular photograph of Osama painted in Truck Art sensibility. Osama being an Arab and

international personality, due to its facial get up and dressing works as the stereotype of

the Jihadi Muslim and is being frequently used in the visual culture of Pakistan from Supari

wrappers to children toys. And this ‘Becoming the other’ can be seen in figure 14.

Figure 13
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Figure 14
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Figure 15
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2: Literature Review

Visuals remain a great part of our life, so does their study. Over the past two

decades there has been a lot written on the subject. The visual culture primarily

considered to be the study of images, has now widened it perspectives and area. Some

most important and notable works done on the subject, starting from the foundational

theorization of the subject the works of James Elkins, W.J.T Mitchell and contribution of

Mathew Rampley to the concerned subject are reviewed here in order to entertain further

the main and desired objectives of this research. A notable contribution to the subject of

visual culture of Pakistan by Saima Zaidi and Atteqa Ali’s Ph.D. dissertation are reviewed

thoroughly in a separate chapter following this.

2. 1 from Elkins to Mitchell and Rampley to Rucker

James Elkins, an art historian have been considered a modern theoretician of

images. In one of his notable books Visual Cultures, he has gathered different essays on

visual cultures from different nations. For him the reason for discussing and getting onto

one platform the understanding of visuals is as he defines ‘Because the nation, as a site

for the study of visuality, has been eclipsed by two complementary kinds of studies: those

that focus on transnational, international, and global culture; and those that concentrate
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on local or regional culture.’19 Comparing to global visual culture, Elkins thinks that there

have been lesser work done on particularly visual cultures in certain nations. The book

consists of essays by theorists Saskia Sassen, Immanuel Wallerstein, Dipesh

Chakrabarty, Anthony King, Pascale Casanova, and Arjun Appadurai who have

discussed the national, social, political forces and historical perspectives behind their

respective nation’s visual cultures; and have remolded the discourse on the global and

the local culture. ‘The occult reappearance of the visual through the literary is a recurrent

theme in these essays.’20

Among those essays Lost In Translation, or Nothing To See but Everything by

Sunil Manghani is relevant enough. Manghani is an outsider to Japan neither he knows

to speak Japanese nor country’s culture; and his essay reflects an outsider’s take onto

the visual culture of Japan. According to him his ‘key text is Roland Barthes’s on

overlooked Empire of Signs (1983).’21 Through which he explores the visual culture of

Japan as a visitor and letting himself to get lost in. And his sensibility towards this essay

is of not interpreting or using semiotics to decode it rather “as Barthes does, its destination

unwind to reveal the situation as it is.”22 On the disappointment of confronting another

picture than of the previously considered one, Manghani describes the reactions of

visitors to japan as “The situation is even worse for Carey’s son, whose manga-filled

fantasies are most certainly more adequately catered for by visiting his local comic shop

in New York than by being dragged around places of historic and cultural interest in the

19 James Elkins, ‘Introduction’ in Visual Cultures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1.
20 Ibid., 2.
21 Sunil Manghani, “Lost In Translation, or Nothing To See but Everything” in Visual cultures, edit, by

Elkins, James (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 28.

22 Ibid., 33.
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real Japan!”23 It’s always the image that fascinates that is one’s attribution, the

representation of that subject as Barthes put it “What the public wants is the image of

passion, not passion itself”24 rather the subject itself. The visual culture thus provides a

very basic and informative image of a certain culture, but constructed one. And that

content is not always necessary to be intentional behind its makers as Manghani puts it

“All too often it is as if we think images must always be full of meaning, when in fact they

may be just there, ready (though not necessarily willing) to take on these meanings we

attribute to them.”25

James Elkins in his book why are our picture puzzles inquires this ever growing

need to define images. As he describes that in previous century critics had to use least

number of words on images, but in this century how it has happened that words refuse to

help after sometime? And ‘why, in the span of a little more than a century, have pictures

become so difficult to explain, so demanding, so puzzling?’26 And for answering that

question one of the seven answers he provides states ‘that the culture has changed the

meaning of pictures.’27 How does culture change the meaning of images? Or is really as

Mitchell supposes ‘What pictures want in the last instance, then, is simply to be asked

what they want, with the understanding that the answer may well be, nothing at all.’28 And

whereas Mitchell in his essay what is an image by talking about the ever-being-there

23 Sunil Manghani, “Lost In Translation, or Nothing To See but Everything” in Visual cultures, edit, by
Elkins, James (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 29.
24 Ronald Barthes, ‘The world of wrestling’ in Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers (New York: The Noon

Day Press, 1991) 16.

25 Manghani, Lost in Translation, or Nothing To See but Everything, 34.
26 James Elkins, Preface to Why our pictures are puzzles? ON THE MODERN ORIGINS OF PICTORIAL

COMPLEXITY (London: Routledge, 1999), i.

27 Ibid,. 208.
28 W. J. T. Mitchell, “What do pictures ‘really’ want?” The MIT Press, October, Vol. 77 (summer, 1996), 82.

Accessed May 02, 2015, http://culturevisuelle.org/genie/files/2012/11/mitchell_whatpictureswant.pdf

Page | 29

relationship of language and image supposes a contradiction that ‘The modern pictorial

image, like the ancient notion of "likeness," is at last revealed to be linguistic in its inner

workings.’29 So an image or visual would have to say something, some meaning that it

want to convey, how certain images emits ideologies and conceptual discourses? ‘Why

do we have this compulsion to conceive of the relation between words and images in

political terms, as a struggle for territory, a contest of rival ideologies? Because the

relationship between words and images reflects, within the realm of representation,

signification, and communication, the relations we posit between symbols and the world,

signs and their meanings.’30

On importance of images, and their status Mitchell suggests ‘But we should note

that these ideal objects-forms, species, or images-need not be understood as pictures or

impressions. These kinds of "images" could just as well be understood as lists of

predicates enumerating the characteristics of a class of objects, such as: Tree: (1) tall,

vertical object; (2) spreading green top; (3) rooted in ground.’31 Mitchell on redefining the

images in modern times and answering the question that what is an image; suggests that

images have not become clearer yet neither have lost their importance but they are retain

the same powers and ideologies ‘It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that the

English Civil War was fought over the question of images’ 32 What was that question?

And what do really images transcend and convey?

29 W. J. T. Mitchell, What is an image in New Literary History, Vol. 15, No. 3, Image/Imago/Imagination
(Spring, 1984), 28. Accessed on April 15, 2015, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28 198421%29
15%3A3%3C503%3AWIAI%3E2.O.C0%3B2-S
30 Ibid.,
31 Ibid., 21.
32 Ibid., 2.
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How does images become part of mass culture and vice versa? For that Johanna Drucker

in the essay “Who is afraid of visual culture” draws parallel links and shifts of fine art and

mass culture. The articles opens with the discourse on one of outmoded ideas that art

defines itself in critical opposition to mass culture. The ever existing link between both the

fields have always inspired, effected and inter-shared many things; more notably the

visual and verbal material. This article has been written in response to two art exhibitions

of early American modernist artists whose art practice carries within the illustrative and

mass media sensibilities of art making practice. The early American modernist unlike

European modernism heavily appropriated mass media culture and incorporated into their

fine art practice to broaden the visual culture as never before. The apparent threat to fine

art’s privileged status posed by modern visual culture was because the modern

sensibilities towards art making was indeed to run away from the mechanical modes of

reproductions. The mass media being much stronger at the disseminations of aesthetics

developments than fine arts, displayed various modes of production of images and text

and challenged fine arts’ claims for the visual form as opposed to of graphic design’s as

continuously modifying ideological of any visual given style. Briefly, “the visual of

contemporary life, fine art and commercial alike, have been shaped by the history of

graphic design”33; and identity of art practice has been intimately bounded up with of that

mass culture. The appropriation of commercial imagery and design that populate pop art

then postmodern art, are simply part of a long history of such exchanges, each with its

33Johanna Drucker, Who’s afraid of visual culture in Art Journal, College Art Association Vol 58, No 4,
1999, 43. Accessed on April 04, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/777910.
Page | 31

own historical character and charge”34 My only response to this article in form of an

opposition is that early American art was heavily influenced by the mass culture due to

the ever grossing mechanical production; but the whole movement cannot be labeled as

the mass culture oriented practice. The visual culture of America is inevitably shifting its

roots to other parts of the world, making it a two way thing; which could be addressed in

the article to make it more convenient in terms of the subject matter of its thesis, as the

mass production reaches other parts of the world so does the visual baggage it holds. If

early movements like impressionism, expressionism were heavily influenced by the mass

culture, then what made those artists to negate that visual culture? If this question could

be addressed then one might figure out the driving force behind this idea. The fine art and

mass culture imagery are interrelated; then how come the graphic designer is

autonomous unlike in the fine art? And what is left for the authorship of certain designers

and their identities? That we will inquire to answer in the chapter following.

Another important article on the cross-cultural interaction by P. Mathew Canepa

titled “Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual

Cultures” deals with ‘Confronting the problems of cross-cultural interactions among visual

cultures demands that we concentrate on not just the objects, their origin, context, patrons

or creators but on the processes and practices of cross-cultural interaction that provide

the dynamic means of their transformation.’35 The visual cultures of old empires and

34 Ibid., 43
35 Mathew P. Canepa, "Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual
Cultures” In Ars Orientalis, Vol. 38, Theorizing Cross-Cultural Interaction Among The Ancient And Early
Medieval Mediterranean, Near East And Asia (2010), Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution
and Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan, Accessed on 03 April, 2015,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/29550018.
Page | 32

traditions of Asia and Europe, provides a basic thesis for the reason and grounds on

which these transformations happen of certain art objects, motifs, and manuscripts.

“…The most productive theoretical approaches for understanding cross-cultural

interaction share an insistence that cultures are not unitary monoliths but dynamic

interrelated systems continually recreated by daily or generational human practice”36 The

article thoroughly provide a brief and concise history of old cultures like byzantine,

Mongol, Persian, roman and Greek ranging from chine, Persia to Russia. The most

notable reason of the appropriation of visual material in certain host culture is dependent

on the Trade system, and conceptually on the idea of Power. How borrowed images

change their meanings and interpretations other than that of the original context is due to

the conceptual and political treatment done to them; as certain iconic material such as

Phoenix, dragon and some animals transferred from Mongols to Persia, the original idea

and connotations attached to them were largely transformed politically and visually: Like

they showing the fight with dragons by the Persian heroes. “different objects could have

different meaning according to how they are used by new owners and users and

interpreted by the differently conditioned eyes of the new host society”37 Certain religions

unlike other religions appropriated heavily the visual material from the host culture, which

enviably made that certain religion much more disseminated and grossing quickly. Having

said that although transported and shaped by foreign forces like commerce, diplomacy

and politics, “images and art objects themselves had an independent agency to change

cultures.”38 Certain borrowed images, motif, figures and art object were interpreted in their

36 Mathew P. Canepa, Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual
Cultures, 9.
37 Ibid., 12.
38 Ibid., 17.
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own interest and appropriated certain visuailities in order to imply/modify/ comment on

the Other culture. “Visual material itself could introduce new ways of seeing, or

“visualities”, to a host culture…”39 On the authorship of the visuals he theorize that “An

image or object could have many “authors” as it had patrons, artists, or viewers, who

reinterpreted it, or contexts that provide new and unexpected meanings.”40 This article

provides conditions and perspectives along with reasons that what these transformation

happens and what is the driving force behind the re-contextualization of the borrowed

material. In a complex visual culture the autonomy of the authorship of the certain material

gets so many authors as it proceeds and take journey from one culture to other. Another

important argument could be made in opposition to that when it comes to the visual culture

of certain area, the culture is always a combination and mixture of symbols and signs

borrowed from and around; where there is no originality; how come certain visuals gets

labeled as under the certain particular culture? A culture which is not the purest in its

nature, always and is in state of changing and is in flux; leaves no material stacked to

only its context rather inevitably keeps on shifting its meaning, contents and contexts.

On adaptation and appropriation Martin Zielinger’s "What appropriation? Why

appropriation? How appropriation?” In Arts and Politics of Appropriation provides a basic

theorization of the terms. The writer clearly distinguish two terms Adaptation and

Appropriation with help of deconstructing and critiquing existing theories around. The

adaptation falling into three categories “transposition,” “commentary,” and “analogue”

where appropriation being the extended adaptation. For him, the notion of Foreknowledge

39
Mathew P. Canepa, Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual Cultures, 14.
40
Ibid., 40.
Page | 34

is the basic and primary expectation in order to enjoy the playfulness and decoding of the

material presented. Artist have long observed appropriation as the sociopolitical critique

and dissent. He further at point writes “In the sphere of the arts, appropriation is thus

never a vehicle of only aesthetics; instead, it emerges as one that is always inextricably

bound to the economic, the political, and the ethical, and that links Modernist and

postmodernist philosophies of property, ownership, and authorship.” 41 In act of making

new works by appropriating other material, the notion of the originality and authorship are

criticized and asserted, because the component of that work which is before is already

authored and at the same time can be argued to be and is original. A very important

significance of the appropriated material that the writer describes as “‘Appropriation’ to

some extent always signifies ‘circulation,’.”42 And among this circulation for its authorship

he argues that “appropriators can, of course, be indifferent towards their own implication

in discourses of ownership and authorship”43 The appropriation being the umbrella term

for the extended adaptations, does not clearly manifest itself in the field of literature as

opposed to visual culture; where and on what basis the textual appropriation changes

with the visual appropriation?

41 Martin Zielinger, "What appropriation? Why appropriation? How appropriation? In Arts and Politics of
Appropriation” (PhD diss., Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto, 2009), 24.
42 Ibid., 30.
43 Ibid., 28.
Page | 35

2. 2 From Bazaar to Mazaar and back home

Some of the most important works done on visual culture of Pakistan, Saima Zaidi’s

compilation of different writer’s essays on Pakistani visual culture and Atteqa Ali’s Ph.D

dissertation are notable.

Mazaaar, Bazaar: Design and visual culture in Pakistan is and is the compilation

of thirty-three essays on visuals and their interaction with viewers. The essays analyze

the semiotics of certain images, and their cultural and political connotations with regard

to the context of certain time and place. This book as Saima Zaidi says in introduction

does not cover the other media except the still images; ‘The term visual culture covers

popular and mass culture and ancient and contemporary art and architecture, but does

not include the moving image.’44 Most importantly the essays reflect a ‘visual culture that

evolved from centuries of exchanges with diverse civilizations.’45 On the diversity and

modifications in visual culture she writes ‘an understanding of diversity is particularly

relevant today when technology has raised access to sources of other cultures and

triggered an unprecedented desire to retain a distinct identity while appreciating other

influences.’46

The book is divided into five sections. The first section deals with the images on

roads, street walls and bus stops etcetera. These visuals incorporate within the desires,

44 Saima Zaidi, Introduction in Mazaar, Bazaar (Karachi: Oxford University press, 2009), xiii.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., xvii.
Page | 36

fantasies and dreams of people. Durre. S Ahmed’s journey inquires the three icons: The

Buraq, Jhulay Laal and Zuljinnah. All being the symbols of transport in one way or the

other, she studies the semiotics of these icons on the busses, rickshaws and other

transporter mediums and drive to the very basic question of human existence and the

journey of the soul. In semiotics of the nation’s icons Nazish Attaullah studies the art of

miniature painting as craft form ‘preservation of a precolonial past’ during the Birtish Raj

to the contemporary neo miniature. ‘The strange democratization of the iconography’47 is

allowed when the miniature is juxtaposed with truck art. In Aina, Hassan Zaidi discusses

the Lollywood posters and their making. And most importantly the essay focuses on the

hand painted posters to digitally generated ones and their new content. ‘Atteqa Ali

elaborates the presence of a hybrid style of imagery in the backdrops is the result of an

imagined amalgamation of East and West and ‘an aspiration to be modern.’48 Her essay

deals with the Rooh Kheench photography popular in 1950s and 1960s, ‘with the click of

camera the sitter were transported to Europe…’49 The photography was brought by British

in India in mid nineteenth century. The early black and white photography used hand

painted colors in it ‘that technique of adding paint to a photograph was used by

Europeans, but seems to have exploited in colonial India.’50 One can see the early

adaptations of colonial India from the west in terms of mediums, techniques and even

desires and ideologies but rendered and executed in local styles and sensibilities; ‘yet

this style was never entirely based on European concepts. Painters manipulated these

47 Nazish Attaullah and Imran Qureshi, ‘The semiotics of the nation’s icons in Mazaar, Bazaar (Karachi:
Oxford University press, 2009), 26.
48 Saima Zaidi, Introduction in Mazaar, Bazaar (Karachi: Oxford University press, 2009), xv.
49 Atteqa Ali, ‘Rooh Kheench Spirit Pulling’ in Mazaar, Bazaar (Karachi: Oxford University press, 2009),

49.
50 Ibid.
Page | 37

foreign ideas by incorporating local influences.’51 As she gives example of Ravi Varma’s

painting and how he portrayed Indian village and local life in classically western way. And

his painting’s aesthetic sensibilities then ‘translated into an industry of bazaar art, from

production of calendars to stage backdrops’52 and this is what can be found in one of

popular image making methods familiar in popular art in subcontinent in form of ‘Rooh-

kheench backdrops’. And the buildings and architecture that was used in those backdrops

were mostly constructed on ‘Victorian concepts of grandeur, is partly neo-classical, partly

Mughal in style’53

The next section deals with the text images. Arabic texts and versus from Quran

can be found everywhere in Pakistan. In ‘Not reading the writing on the wall’ Jamal J.

Elias discusses the Quranic versus written on walls and mosques stressing that they work

as the symbolic attributive to Religiosity, where the ornamented text is unreadable it only

works as an image.

The third section deals with the consumer culture of Pakistan and discusses the

advertising and packaging of certain items and the symbolically what ideology they hold.

Durriya Kazi’s Tibet Talcum Powder discusses the European concepts of beauty, dirt and

cleansing. ‘The cream was the local equivalent of the English product Hazeline Snow,

which in 1936 was the only cream available in the Indian subcontinent.’54 The company

that created this product cleverly transcended the foreign ideology, a European dream of

this desire to look white and remove the dirt off the face and be superior. ‘Today the

51 Atteqa Ali, ‘Rooh Kheench Spirit Pulling’ in Mazaar, Bazaar (Karachi: Oxford University press, 2009),
50.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Durriya Kazi, ‘Tibet Talcum Powder’ in Mazaar, Bazaar (Karachi: Oxford University press, 2009), 141.
Page | 38

images that sell most products are of young men and women…that is informed by

international fashion and advertising icons.”55 That is due to make it more vast and

travelling internationally to inform the marketing strategies. ‘These assume a universal

middle class with shared aspirations to attain a common standard of living as defined by

the West.”56 This inclination towards submitting the ways of lives to West and its

ideologies is due to their colonization over half of the world.

The fourth chapter deals with the visual culture after independence as in its

postcolonial times. In reimaging the image Akbar Zaidi concentrates on the advertisement

featuring a youthful, dynamic Mohammed Ali Jinnah as opposed to the familiar, elderly

iconic figure of the founder of the nation.

Atteqa Ali in ‘Social Commentary and Formal Experimentation in Contemporary

Pakistani Art’ find the traces of influences from social, Political to global forces onto the

contemporary art of Pakistan. Giving the whole context of partition and Zia-ul-Haq’s

dictatorship over Pakistan and its aftermath over Pakistani art; she describes the early

modern art’s arrival from Europe in Pakistan. ‘Although Cubism was far from the latest

development in art in Europe when Shakir Ali lived and studied there from 1945 until 1951,

it was a style (in addition to precursors of Cubism, including the work of Paul Cézanne)

that he chose for his own work and one he advocated for other artists, perhaps because

it seemed so radically different from Classical painting.’57 The desire for the ‘New’ has

always motivated artists and designers to create and adapt art within their respective

55 Durriya Kazi, Tibet Talcum Powder, 144.

56 Ibid.
57 Atteqa Ali, Social Commentary and Formal Experimentation in Contemporary Pakistani Art (PhD diss.,

The University of Texas at Austin, 2008), 25.

Page | 39

contexts. A whole majority of artists adapted European styles of panting and used

European semiotic devices such as in work of Quddus Mirza’s ‘painting, there is a target-

like halo around the king’s head and torso. This symbol indicates his indebtedness to the

American artist, and it also plays with the supposed sacredness of the ruler. Mughal

emperors were portrayed with halos surrounding their heads. These devices symbolizing

sanctity came from European art that circulated in the Empire’s courts.’58 Some artists in

their practices inquired to know and tried to trace back these in-layered influences of

mixing of different genres from different parts of the world as Atteqa writes ‘Many artists

involved in these movements challenged the establishment. In bringing together

American Pop art, international Conceptual art, and Mughal miniature painting, Quddus

challenges the austere interpretation of the latter. His playful approach questions how it

has been fixed in popular imagination. This is accomplished through manipulating

techniques and painting styles.’59 These foreign adaptations and local modifications

along with the creation of the ‘New’ have always troubled the artists’ mind in regard to its

local context, and which they have tried to point out and inquire more as in example of

Mirza’s work. And more importantly the fusion of the two, the foreign adaptations rendered

with the local and traditional sensibilities such as in Zahoor-ul-Akhlaque’s visual making

practice ‘Mixing and blending this more recent method with the centuries-old miniature

technique, the artist attempted to bring together the traditional and contemporary.’ 60 On

colonization Atteqa drives our attention to a more important factor that is of art institutions

and the British influences. British begun four institutions for design (notably Mayo School

58 Atteqa Ali, Social Commentary and Formal Experimentation in Contemporary Pakistani Art, 51.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., 38.
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of Art, Lahore). ‘The curriculum in the four British institutions focused on local crafts and

design, mirroring agendas set in industrial arts academies in England and pointing to

issues circulating then in the British art world, in particular those that centered on the

South Kensington School of Industrial Arts in London from which many key players in

Indian art education came.’61 And soon after British relinquished their control in

subcontinent ‘the college worked to eliminate any association with the former colonizer,

at least in name. However, it took more pronounced efforts to shift practices from colonial

times. The practice of the fine arts became more significant than its previous design

focus.’62

4: Methodology

This paper investigates the borrowed and popular imagery and its very adapted

ideologies and sociopolitical submissions to West (Other) through cross-cultural

interactions resulting in Lahore’s visual culture. More importantly to inquire and locate the

circumstances and grounds on which these adaptations and appropriations happen to be

in Lahore’s visual culture, and how certain visuals attain the status of Icons in the host

culture without acknowledging the authorship? Using the qualitative, descriptive research

design; I researched and gathered research data done on the subject from the both view-

61 Atteqa Ali, Social Commentary and Formal Experimentation in Contemporary Pakistani Art, 58.
62 Ibid.
Page | 41

points, works done in the west and done in this part of the world. To evaluate and inquire

on the research question I surveyed and select some visuals among the others best

representing the issue and working as representative for the other images. Research

questions guiding this study were explored by analyzing the theories and prior research

done on the subject by other scholars and using a semi-structured interview of a an

artist/social worker/educator Farida Batool whose research work is primarily dealing close

to this subject.

4.1 Research Design

This research employed a qualitative, descriptive design using an interview. According to

Leedy and Ormrod (2010), descriptive research involves identifying characteristics of an

observed occurrence. A qualitative research design was applied to this study because I

wanted to investigate characteristics of certain visuals in order to inquire on the subject

which could not be investigated simply by analyzing numbers. The research questions

then are discussed using the Lahore-based artist/educator’s interview.

The longer transcript of the interview is given in the following chapter.

Page | 42

5: Interview

This interview of Farida Batool was conducted at her residence in Model Town, Lahore on May 1st, 2015.

Farida Batool is a visual artist and researcher in visual culture. She currently heads the Department of

Communication and Cultural Studies, National College of Arts, her alma mater since 1993. In 2003, she

completed Master by Research in Art History and Theory from University of New South Wales, Australia,

and then enrolled in a PhD program in 2008 in Media and Film Studies at SOAS, University of London, with

a thesis title "New Media, Masculinity and Mujra Dance in Pakistan". She travelled extensively and

presented papers and presentations at Oxford University, UK; Jawaharlal Nehru University, India;

UNESCAP Jordan; UNIFEM Bangladesh; and published a book, Figure: the Popular and Political in

Pakistan, 2004.

5.1 The keen observant (Interview)

MJ: How would you describe that how ordinary does become the popular?

FB: First tell me that in which sense are you taking ordinary and in what sense the

popular?

MJ: Ordinary in a sense that in your everyday life you come across so many things which

are visuals basically…

Page | 43

FB: You are talking about visuals or you are talking about material also?

MJ: you can tag visuals onto everything…

FB: I mean, like this thing it’s in material culture and also in visual, so first we need to

elaborate to categorize material and visual culture so that we could include many things.

MJ: Yes…no basically how I think it is that a text before being a text is a visual before

being a text, so in that sense everything you see, which you encounter in your daily life,

comes under the title of visual. So in that regard how would you describe ordinary from

popular? And how ordinary becomes the popular?

FB: yes, so if we would see the classical definition of the popular, anything which comes

under…if we would take its root, the Pop like pop art is, and the definition of the popular

culture which comes in the cultural studies, that basically goes toward all the mediums

that…, which are mass appealing media like television, cable, video, internet…print

media, electronic media; so these things which have a mass appeal, we do call them

popular. And from that the classic, which travels from the earlier

times…hmmm….music…coke studio, things like these. Then what is ordinary? And

ordinary…I don’t actually in my opinion I don’t separate the two, that’s why I was asking

you that how you define the ordinary and popular, how you see it like.

Because…hmm…anything which is popular of that level…of that scale…mass scale, that

becomes the ordinary.

KJ: So you basically don’t differentiate between these two?

FB: I think, like Stewart Hall critiques that…he talks about the hegemony. And he talks

about that a thing which comes into the culture, that goes from up to downwards, not from
Page | 44

down to upwards. For example, if we would talk about the Jeans…or of sunglasses…the

ones with black frame…so it will make an iconic image of certain big brand, it will have a

bigger face…and when a heroin or a man would wear it and after some time outside the

Anarkali, on a flag…of that same sunglasses’ fake copies will be selling for 50 rupees,

you see…that same thing but the quality will be different. Design color everything will be

exactly the same, and anyone can wear that and be that person for some time, that was

that image…so its price…that price was 1000 dollars for example, and if that goes for 50

rupees; so by the time it goes down to 50 rupees, than the other person who purchases

it for 1000 will would have gone to another level. Than for him, he wanted something new.

And…I often say that classical music…when it became popular…then the people of high

class would be listening to Naseebo Laal. That with nostalgia…that “You know…that was

part of our culture”

KJ: Right, so you say that when a thing becomes peculiar…and a thing which becomes

really into-the-people, it becomes frequent as to put in a layman’s word...like you gave

the example of sunglasses…

FB: Like take the example of Truck Art…Pakistani, like “Satrangi” people they have taken

Truck Art…or ‘Rang Ja’ for example…now if you see that all those people, what should I

name…Atique for example, he will not promote people who work on trucks and rickshaws

and things like these, because it has become ordinary. Although it was coming from

people, a new genre that they brought of their own… so it’s very complicated, very

simple…but it has layer of very complicated type that when a certain thing becomes

exclusive even though its ordinary. So who chooses it if they are selecting all these Lawn

prints, those are six… six thousands worth suits, artists or elite will probably not go for
Page | 45

that…they would say that everyone is wearing this. So, in that… if I would wear a 2000

worth suit or 1500 worth, but it will be different at least. So it’s not the price always…it’s

not the market, it is you know the taste, the aesthetics of certain class, which is dictated

by social, political, cultural and economical values, on those basis that elitism is created,

so from that how that thing the popular, the ordinary, the exclusive, kitsch and so

on…these all things are defined from that. And it is rotating, it’s changing.

MJ: Basically…if I would rephrase your…the point of whole discussion in one sentence

that there is a very thin line between ordinary and popular which is like a shade of gray

between black and white…

FB: Or you can say popular is the ordinary

MJ: or popular is the ordinary, or they can be vice versa.

FB: or ordinary is popular, or popular versus ordinary.

MJ: So, again what would be the criteria in your point of view to dissect that thin layer

between popular and ordinary, or is it not that much important to dissect the both?

FB: hmm…popular is…I think…I would not see it from another angle or theoretically, but

if I would see it personally that how I look at things…. I will find ordinary sometimes very

very interesting material, but popular I may not think very interesting.... visually. Ordinary

can be a thing which is so ordinary, that people have stopped looking at it with certain

context or frame…so that frame is to be given…If I may take it and say that ‘hey do you

know that if we would look at it like this then what would be its meaning.’ So for me in that

there is a joy in the ordinary… even now. Popular…for me is like a phenomena…to see

okay this is…if Urdu digest is popular, so for me to read it is important for the reason that
Page | 46

I want to see that how women of Pakistan on a popular level; what they read and why

they read it; what are the things that are running into their minds? I need to penetrate their

space so I have to see the popular.

MJ: Yups, it quite gives a good criterion…

FB: yes, the…what you wanted to differentiate….

MJ: So, in the discussion the term Icon came up, then…so how would you describe how

popular becomes the icon? Or how the icons are being made?

Icon is everything. Our dreams…our fantasies… our desires. Icons are basely generated.

MJ: No if we would not see it as semiotic term…the icon; but if would have to see in

everyday life, in visual culture, how these things become icons? Certain objects, certain

logos, certain images?

FB: For example?

MJ: For example, you see there is an icon of leadership, Quid e Azam with a Sherwani

and Quid-Topi (head cap) and we often have seen Imran Khan imitating that. SO it

becomes the icon of that leadership…and we have seen so many icons in our daily life

like KFC’s logo, Macdonald’s M, so all these things fall into the category of Icons, so how

would you see that how icons are being made? Like what is the driving force behind this

Sherwani and this Quid-e-Azam-Topi, to give it the status of being an icon of leadership?

FB: Because the sherwani use to be of so many types, then why one certain sherwani

wore in a particular style does depict that Leadership? I think it is the image making…the

way popular image making is done… because if you look at how…this what would you
Page | 47

call it…waistcoat on shalwar-qameez is an icon of you know of Bureaucratic kind of

pursuit. So it gives this respectability and status that if you are wearing a cotton suit with

a waistcoat, so it does give you that you must be some kind of secretary, chief secretory

or secretory you know. So it is the association which is developed over period of time

through media, definitely. You know when you keep on seeing these images in the

newspapers, on TV that whenever there are high official meeting and they wearing this

kind of dress. So people get this sense that this is the right and appropriate manner to

represent yourself and if you are…no matter how feudal or you are from a peasantry or

whatever class but if you are changing for a social politics so you will try to have a very

crisp Shalwar-Qameez and a waistcoat or you are imitating that image which is there so

it is not only sherwani or Quid-e-Azam but there are many many many icons, which we

are imitating, we are imitating piety icons for example continuously…like how to behave

in Ramzan, you know it’s not only what you wear or you do…the way you are talking, the

way you are behaving in your cultural practices, the way you….I mean if your religion is

something very personal that your spirituality…so if there many people sitting in one room

and it’s kind of a gathering situation, no one is going to notice that who is going to leave

the room and then come back but then why people have to say ‘oh I am just coming after

praying, I’ll be just back’. You know this thing that I am telling you because there is this

icon image of all these women who comes on TV giving you know these kinds of sermons,

piety sermons. So I call them you know this…digital piety…digitalis piety or whatever you

can say. There is…hmmm comes the new media or muslimness on new media space so

you know this sense of how you establish yourself as part of their society. These are all

icons in a way, or when you read and see those literature…popular literature…women
Page | 48

digests and others, so all these digests and popular magazines are sort of reinforcing

those images that a girl for example I tell you at this description when I am reading a

story so the girl enters the room and she has not done a makeup on her face but she is

the most beautiful because she is very simple….then …and then she is behaving in

certain manner in certain Duppata that she would hesitate, there is going to be some kind

of gestures that…would be on her face those would depict the her shyness, and then she

would be told that that guests are coming in the evening today, so she is going to do all

the house work in you know one hour or so, and then it is a formula setting..i am telling

you. And then she is going to go to the washroom, to change before the guests are

arriving and exactly at that moment she comes out and the door bells…it rings…she has

long hair…they are always wet and she is trying to cover her head and she open the door

and there is this handsome man…you know, and he looks at her simple face very fair and

then you know this story goes on. So icon is established right there, that this is the perfect

image of a woman.

MJ: So basically, you are trying to say or what I get from this that….to take anything as

icon there is big force of media behind it, right? So being in Lahore how would you see

the visual culture of Lahore ranging from print media to digital media or electronic media

how would you see it?

FB: I think it is everywhere, it’s like bombarding our culture. I can’t see a single place

where there is no image or media is not in you know. My own PHD on this that how print

media and virtual spaces. So I mean for that …I would give you one example…like some

time back how the situation f rickshaws started to change. So I see for example these

mobile rickshaws. As a walking wandering it gives you something...the message.

Page | 49

Everyone looks at them, because they have something at the back or the design….and

then for some time there was a lot talk of religiosity which is depicted through rickshaw.

We know all those hate messages, certainly they are gone… so actually we asked police-

walas, that what happed to them? That they are taking off those. Because nowadays they

wanted to change that discourse…but they cannot take off some kinds of even now, so

there is this politics, the politics of the visuals, that’s what I am trying to say. Then we tried

as the group, that we should revive some, and I am being very critical of everything. then

we people, an external body of people who are artists come to this conclusion that we are

the consolers of the visual culture as being artists, and we are going to give them their

heritage back which they were losing because of economic pressure, because of political,

religious pressure…that they give them 500 hundred rupees to put up that flex onto their

rickshaws’ back. So we designed those things, and we worked for the rickshaws, we

collected money from people and we get painted many rickshaws, and some became so

popular even. But we didn’t had lots of money, so after 10, 15 rickshaws the project

stopped. And they were not giving money and the fact that we didn’t had that much time

that we would generate, so we would sit there and say “oh the visual culture of Pakistan

is vanishing after rickshaws’….and suddenly I started seeing…noticing some strange type

of images on the backsides of rickshaws. And they are not one…two…three.... but who

was doing it? With no message, with no agenda…and they are what you are coming to

may be later on cross-cultural discussion…that day I photographed a picture on the

backside of a rickshaw, onto which this big bottle of alcohol, and that was made in that

particular style…that style that they make with regzine…they sew it and

stiches…beautiful. And the other object is the glass and other is this big bottle from which
Page | 50

the alcohol is flowing out…look at that person who would had made it. In this Lahore,

living in this scenario of it, he gave his own design and that is being run by a rickshaw.

And there are many rickshaws if you would notice that this has only started emerging

now, people have not suddenly started noticing it yet not like on a bigger level. And in

those they have shown a girl sitting that is in squirting position…Seriously, on a rickshaw,

it was a huge thing for me. And then I saw one of dancing, that there are images like Yo,

love style…one with the hoodie. Where are these coming from? Who is putting up all

these? How is this happening? That discussion that was on visual culture that

ordinary…that something new in it…so these people of Lahore who are making

these…even before they are the persons who were making previously…that some

influences came from up, and some came from people like us that we tried to do

something which Is a very artificial attempt, so superficial not artificial. Then, but what this

‘New’ is coming, is again coming from ‘that’. But we van not say again it is same as

tradition. Because the image is so different, but the treatment is same like that of

miniature.

MJ: The content is borrowed…

FB: yes, I am very much enjoying now seeing what is being going on in the Lahore’s

visual culture.

MJ: so do you think this practice is very much conscious selection…in terms of borrowing

the content from the outside?

FB: yes…yes. And this will destroy that everything that we say that it was very innate

expression of people who made these things…in that time the ones who were
Page | 51

making…were intelligent people. And they appropriated from somewhere and

incorporated in their designs and made rickshaw wholly as art and then after we named

it rickshaw art. They were practicing a thing.

MJ: So what do you think, what is the driving force behind this whole practice of borrowing

images from west?

FB: I think people love images.

MJ: Undoubtedly, we are the visual people

FB: yes, and when I was interviewing in my research, I mean that I was looking that

literacy… illiteracy has no relation in computer handling, to use internet; they have

invented the ways so much for that that they go to see pornography, the cable operator

the ones in internet cafes…I went to Shaadbaag63…I was interviewing them and so I

asked them that these people who come and give you 10 rupees for half hour, then we

do say that in Pakistan the literacy rate is this, and in order to access YouTube, these

kinds of websites, then a little bit literacy should be acquired? So what happens…you are

talking about visual that what is the drivi…. I think it the desire. Desire to ply with

images…desire to endeavor, to devour images. This is a big desire, and from where

…and this is coming every time…it is being manifested in a different forms though. Then

if I would to talk in respect to my research that how I was looking at it? So he answered

me this way you know that what we do, for those people we have icons on desktop, so

what they do is…they go to their respective cabins, then they see that this the icon and

they would have provided the things on to that, then they click it and from that those

63
Name of a place in Lahore.
Page | 52

images open up. The one they would have to see…or its song or performance…they click

it and watch it.

MJ: So it is very much visually driven system

FB: Yes, so the researches that are happening in foreign, that we see on internet, that

this much percent is the literacy and this much percent computer access is…so I had

questioned that in my thesis, that when on one network, at the same time 50 people are

come and sit in, then the data of computer literacy and accessibility…that all gets

disturbed. Because they are providing access to so many people in one small room, then

how you would say….that you how much population….umm….your quantitative data is

inaccurate. Because they doesn’t have the nuances…then on that basis you can’t give

statement that in Pakistan what type of practices are of people. So in my point of view....

it’s only the desire that is driving force behind.

MJ: And also there is desire to meet the…to westernize ourselves?

FB: Anything, desire to look Mughal, like Mughal. Desire to look nostalgically to look like

of renaissance of Islamic, those value be adapted. Desire to look like that our Maharajas

used be like this. Desire to have an authentic items you know desire to have colonial

masters’ aesthetic, desire to have the powerful in the world whichever it is, desire to have

powerful in the family desire to have associations with of power of image or of icon

of…either it could be of male female, it can be of economic power, of political power, the

person who is the driver what he is driving sitting outside…I don’t know. But it cannot be

that he would not be desiring something.

Page | 53

So…No, I am bit curious to know that what kind of desire exactly…like if you gave the

example of that big bottle of alcohol and the glass, what in your point of view would be

the driving force…desire behind its maker to borrow this image which is quite much

western…and quite much easternized…if you would see it from Mughal image tradition,

so what do you think is the ultimate desire behind its maker that how he would want to

project his desire through this visual onto its viewers, what is his desire?

FB: see, if we would ask multiple people, we will have multiple interpretations. I can

imagine A talking something like this and of statement and B is saying this and if you

would ask me my angle would be this. So we don’t know exactly what was the reason

behind it that is your question…until we don’t ask the people. And the question is whether

that person is going give us the real answer or he himself is aware of this? There two

question, that what he is aware of and what he will be answering, or it can be mix of the

both. So these things are very complex, we can only do its interpretation. And everything

is subjective interpretation. So my interpretation of that image could be…because I can’t

psychoanalyze…its nether my area nor I do have that kind of expertise, and I think people

should not do this that in my opinion he would had made this for this reason…how could

you know? You can say in my interpretation or it looks to me that. So my interpretation of

that image would be that a certain society…that is burning people…in the name of

blasphemy or whatever that someone burned someone or someone killed

someone…there is not so much expression…stifling is around…in that of one person… I

can also imagine this person is going through images and he says…and he is drunk…and

is smoked up too…and he says ‘o friend, I think...put this up’… he is in certain mood, may

be it is as simple as that…he just liked it. Or it could be…if we would see it in this way
Page | 54

that those carnivalesque theories those are there that whenever there is so much

oppression than the lower class that is there, that in a way express themselves…that is

subversion of the state authority…so it can be that they wanted to say….or they don’t be

saying that we all are subverting…for example Punjabi theatre, what’s going on there, it’s

the subversion. The way they call by name certain people and make fun of them…in that

there is of males too. So everyone is ridiculed, it’s the subversion taking place. Of that all

oppressions…if we would see…then I think on an unconscious level they don’t do it like

that we will question this, like we artists do. I think they just put up…Janay do (let it go).

MJ: Or is it because that we are so much used to these images?

FB: And that are we are so much beaten to extent that you say that we don’t have any

stakes more than this. Then they say what will come after? To its maximum…a policeman

will come and beat up.

MJ: So coming back to icons, how would you respond to the notion the several icon are

that much into our lives that they have lost their importance as icons? Like as we talked

before that these things are so much into our lives that they have lost their importance,

do you think Icons also do…that they have lost their importance?

FB: I don’t think they lose their importance, because we are being made icons,

MJ: Can you define it bit please that how?

FB: I mean, for example…at some moment I…what example should I give you being a

woman…hmmm…among leadership we only have Benazir, so…if I imagine that

someone wants to come in leadership and he takes Bhutto…or something like Sherwani

symbol…and he like there is joke that Imran’s Sherwani is still hanged in is cupboard,
Page | 55

that’s really teasing him…so you won’t see that as that the Quid-e-Azam had worn this

like this, in so in that sense it loses its…but then it has its own life then because when the

moment you embrace it…its same like as you wear the dress of superman. Or you….the

people they show in TV that…those who come in their costume become alive, that skin

comes up than their powers also do, that’s the moment that you all experience…when we

wear that black sunglasses…and I sit in my car and the reflection…and I am not in that

moment who is sitting…just before that was sitting in a room in that office looking at the

marks and the attendances, and that kind of boring stuff, I am transported to the world of

that image that is somewhere in my mind frozen…stored. And I am part of that, so I

become the icon…so icon become regenerated, reborn, to me at that moment.

MJ: Right, so…now like as the superman came up I the discussion, that superman being

an Americanized version of….that it’s that blue dress which is very much American thing,

so seeing that American thing…superman…in Lahore; like the children wear that

costume, do you find it that it is justified by being re-contextualized? And we embrace it

as our own…the superman?

FB: See, when the flag of Pakistan…on 14th of August…there mickey mouse made on

that flag, so the superman is even contemporary. Mickey mouse’s birth is even before

Pakistan, then what it has to do on the Pakistan’s flag? And the children don’t even know

the mickey mouse…I mean that they won’t respond to even those animated people acting

in that costume… (Chuckles)…who’s mickey mouse?, for the Disneyland is not here

even, then…now the things that they see they can relate to the global media images…that

comes into their homes, they don’t see it as American, that’s something that they find

daily on their TV.

Page | 56

MJ: So, it becomes their own?

FB: Yes, of course. Like burgers, or you would go to eat Bun-Kabbab or Band-Plaster,

what is that? It’s the same…the localized and indigenized.

MJ: A local version of that.

FB: Yes, of course.

MJ: So, if we would to conclude the thesis of it, that in this globalization everything

is…even all the cultures are borrowing each other’s things and…

FB: Yes, the woman that go to Harams in foreign, wearing the jeans and Abbayah on

top…what image they are portraying? Forget about us borrowing from the Gora, what

about them, all these women…this is that Arabian delight…Richard Burton when

translated that…200 years before, from that time it is clinging to their minds, that Arabs

women, Iraqi women, Haroon Rasheed’s haram, and their shalwars…that’s meaning is

not shalwar only, that’s meaning is all that ‘Ayashi’, that at their time was fit in their

imaginations, that freedom, sex, love, alcohols, enjoyment…everything that they are now

striving, eastern smells, eastern scents…eastern this and eastern environment,

massage. This all…what is all this, it is fixed I that moment of Arabian nights. That

literature was developed and then transported and then films were made, and all that.

Samely, these powerful super heroes that come from there….that’s the same thing. It’s

cross-cultural.

MJ: Yes, at every moment…every minute.

FB: Yes.
Page | 57

MJ: So in a way they consciously or unconsciously borrow some kind of ideology, some

kind of political or social force behind this, what would you like to vanish…which icon

would you want to remove from your everyday…that you don’t want to see it anymore?

FB: I would like to erase all those icons, which induce hate. For me that is something…rest

the desire…i mean…at times like there was appoint I was very feminist kind of person, I

would hate to see the exploitation of the women. Yes, but I still feel that you know of

course there is that kind of violence which in in sighted… or in any way that is being

done….but this kind of images, any type of which explains or justifies hate and violence,

that is for me not acceptable, whether it’s on women, minorities, in the name of religion,

in the name of piety, in the name ideology, that is not acceptable.

MJ: Thank you ma’am.

Page | 58

6: Conclusion

Discussion of research Questions

Research question outline: How our collective understanding of a visual culture is

heavily relied upon popular media (visual or verbal); and how this whole idea of

appropriating the borrowed iconic material from the Other adds to the authorship of a new

contemporary visual/virtual culture in Lahore?

Research sub-question 1: Find and locate the processes and practices that drive the

borrowed imagery in Lahore’s visual culture?

Research sub-question 2: What meanings and connotation are regenerated; what

ideologies are being made/conveyed?

Research sub-question 3: How this phenomenon does reflect a new visual culture?

Research sub-question 4: How this political manipulation takes place within a certain

context of area and its visual culture?

Lahore being the central place in subcontinent was in continuous interactions with

other cultures and places. Till independence Lahore has remained in variety of

governments and empires of various (foreign) cultures. And through this timeframe

Lahore did interact with other cultures. ‘…The most productive theoretical approaches

for understanding cross-cultural interaction share an insistence that cultures are not
Page | 59

unitary monoliths but dynamic interrelated systems continually recreated by daily or

generational human practice”64 So the everyday life is always in state of modifications

and when forces of other cultures practiced their cultures in the context of Lahore, some

exchanges happened through certain kinds of interactions. And Through these cross-

cultural interactions some visuals, objects and texts were adapted or inherited frequently

to the host culture. But the question arises that what is the driving force behind this

exchange and the adaptations, appropriations of the materials to be part of popular

culture? That is the question of Power. “The field of popular culture is structured by the

attempt of the ruling class to win hegemony and by forms of opposition to this endeavor.

As such, it consists not simply of an imposed mass culture that is coincident with dominant

ideology, nor simply of spontaneously oppositional cultures, but is rather an area of

negotiation. Between the two within which-in different particular types of popular culture-

dominant, subordinate and oppositional cultural and ideological values and elements are

‘mixed’ in different permutation.’65 And when we appropriate (or we are circumcised to

appropriate) from the higher power, we in a way submit to it. The idea of appropriation in

its deeper meanings and politics suggests as “appropriation is never a vehicle of only

aesthetics; instead, it emerges as one that is always inextricably bound to the economic,

the political, and the ethical, and that links Modernist and postmodernist philosophies of

property, ownership, and authorship.”66

64Mathew P. Canepa, "Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual
Cultures”, 9.
65Tony Bennett, ‘Popular culture and the turn to Gramsci,’ in Cultural Theory and Popular
Culture: A Reader, 2nd edn, edited by Storey, John (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, 1998), 221.

66Mathew P. Canepa, "Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual
Cultures”, 13.
Page | 60

One can extract that this inbuilt sensibility of appropriating the iconic materials from

the Other (That was long ago inherited and injected to us) has a political ideological force

behind; that is of the hegemony of the West. The new constructed visual by appropriating

the materials from the west has inevitably a newer and different content. How borrowed

images change their meanings and interpretations other than that of the original context

is due to the conceptual and political treatment done to them; as certain iconic material

such Macdonald’s logo or Superman; the original idea and connotations attached to them

were largely transformed politically and visually: Like in the Figures 10, 11, 15. ‘Different

objects could have different meaning according to how they are used by new owners and

users and interpreted by the differently conditioned eyes of the new host society.”67 And

this in a way inherits a new way of seeing- it modifies our understanding of the very

subjects of our culture. Transported and shaped by foreign forces like commerce,

diplomacy and politics ‘images and art objects themselves had an independent agency

to change cultures.”68

As discussed some of the local popular modes of imagery like Bollywood posters,

rickshaw and truck art did also incorporated western/foreign iconic imagery. And this

phenomenon happens to be occuring so usual and in enormous quantity that we have

embraced the understating of the foreign material as our own; that is because of the

recontexualization of the material. As Batool in an answer to this question says ‘Yes, of

course. Like burgers, or you would go to eat Bun-Kabbab or Band-Plaster, what is that?

67 Mathew P. Canepa, "Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual
Cultures”, 12.
68 Ibid.
Page | 61

It’s the same…but the localized and indigenized.’ And one of the important factor is of the

easy and everywhere availability. One see these foreign materials so frequent that they

have lost their importance as their original content and have become ordinary. ‘Then what

is ordinary? And ordinary…I don’t actually in my opinion I don’t separate the two, that’s

why I was asking you that how you define the ordinary and popular, how you see it like.

Because…hmm…anything which is popular of that level…of that scale…mass scale, that

becomes the ordinary.’69

The globalization has reduced the world to a drawing room. Children get

familiarized with western visuals earlier from home through their TVs and have started

embracing the American superman and Mickey mouse as their own. As Batool describes

‘See, when the flag of Pakistan…on 14th of August…there mickey mouse made on that

flag, so the superman is even contemporary. Mickey mouse’s birth is even before

Pakistan, then what it has to do on the Pakistan’s flag? And the children don’t even know

the mickey mouse…I mean that they won’t respond to even those animated people acting

in that costume… (Chuckles)…who’s mickey mouse?, for the Disneyland is not here

even, then…now the things that they see they can relate to the global media images…that

comes into their homes, they don’t see it as American, that’s something that they find

daily on their TV.’70

This understanding of the Other as Ours is due to the sensibility of the ever

happening interaction and its very interpretation. “An image or object could have many

“authors” as it had patrons, artists, or viewers, who reinterpreted it, or contexts that

69
Interview with Farida Batool
70
Ibid.,
Page | 62

provide new and unexpected meanings.”71 Foreign visuals are interpreted in our own

interests where as “Visual material itself could introduce new ways of seeing, or

“visualities”, to a host culture…”72 And we see it with other eyes-that is to say we don’t

take it as American Ideologues object or visual icon but with recontextualized content.

That content is not always necessary to be intentional behind its makers as Manghani

puts it also:

“All too often it is as if we think images must always be full of meaning, when in

fact they may be just there, ready (though not necessarily willing) to take on these

meanings we attribute to them.”73

These foreign adaptations and local modifications along with the creation of the

‘New’ have always troubled the keen observer in regard to its local context, and that same

reaction can be found in Batool’s remark:

‘(on rickshaws’ back) And in those they have shown a girl sitting that is in squirting

position…Seriously, on a rickshaw, it was a huge thing for me. And then I saw one of

dancing, that there are images like Yo, love style…one with the hoodie. Where are these

coming from? Who is putting up all these? How is this happening? That discussion that

was on visual culture that ordinary…that something new in it…so these people of Lahore

who are making these…even before they are the persons who were making

previously…that some influences came from up, and some came from people like us that

71 Mathew P. Canepa, "Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual
Cultures”, 19.
72 Mathew P. Canepa, "Theorizing cross-cultural interaction among Ancient and Early Medieval Visual

Cultures”, 14.
73 Sunil Manghani, “Lost In Translation, or Nothing To See but Everything” in Visual cultures, edit, by

Elkins, James (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 34.

Page | 63

we tried to do something which Is a very artificial attempt, so superficial not artificial. Then,

but what this ‘New’ is coming, is again coming from ‘that’. But we cannot say again it is

same as tradition. Because the image is so different, but the treatment is same like that

of miniature.’74

This desire for different image- this desire of the ‘New’ can be considered the basic

force behind adapting the foreign sensibilities of image making in visual culture of Lahore

ranging from posters, advertisement billboards and products. To sum up this idea of

desire in creation of the ‘New’ in Durriya Kazi’s words that ‘today the images that sell most

products are of young men and women…that is informed by international fashion and

advertising icons… These assume a universal middle class with shared aspirations to

attain a common standard of living as defined by the West” 75 This inclination towards

submitting the ways of lives to West and its ideologies is due to their ‘colonization over

half of the world.’76 And this is the same political and hegemonic concept that Batool refers

to ‘…It’s not the market… It is you know the taste, the aesthetics of certain class, which

is dictated by social, political, cultural and economical values. On those basis that elitism

is created, so from that how that thing… the popular, the ordinary, the exclusive, kitsch

and so on…These all things are defined from that. And It is rotating, It’s changing.’77

74
Interview with Farida Batool
75
Durriya Kazi, Tibet Talcum Powder, 141.
76
Ibid.
77
Interview with Farida Batool
Page | 1

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