In Bangladesh, the 21st of February is the anniversary of the day when Bengalis fought for recognition for the Bangla language (in then East Pakistan) which was tied to Bangladesh’s struggle for independence in 1971. Every year the Association for Bangladeshi Students and Scholars hosts a celebration at Washington State University and asked me to provide a keynote for the 2019 event.
For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Gregory Turner-Rahman and I am the head of the Art + Design program at the University of Idaho. I am also a writer/illustrator. My stock in trade is visual storytelling.
So, I feel a little awkward being up here in front of you, talking with you. I’ve come to this event a number of times and really enjoyed it. I especially remember discussions of preservation of indigenous languages. That, to me, gets to the heart of the issue. It makes apparent the value and importance of this and other cultural events. How then is someone who deals with imagery going to add to the discussion? This is an evening to celebrate language and culture. You are probably wondering what I could possibly offer.
It’s usually at this point in a presentation that I like to tell a joke. Jokes are often the quickest way to connect an audience to a speaker. To put an audience at ease. So, as I was preparing my remarks, I searched for a joke to tell you that was related to language. That didn’t turn out well. Most of the jokes, through a 2019 filter, seemed silly if not downright offensive. I never found a decent joke. But what I found was far more important.
What I found was that humor through technology now happens in a plethora of ways. But we’ll come back to that in a minute.
I spend a lot of my day working with and thinking in images.
Actually, we all do. In 1996, Harvard psychologist Stephen Kossyln wrote a definitive description of the nature of the internal representation of visual mental imagery. Kosslyn used breakthroughs in medical imaging to show that perception and representation are inextricably linked, and to show how "quasi-pictorial" events in the brain are generated, interpreted, and used in cognition.
So, what does that mean exactly? It means, simply, we use images to think. This is really important because there is a common misconception that our thoughts are only in spoken and written language.
Let’s take that thinking a step further. I am here to tell you that art and popular culture—film, in particular—are like a language and vehicles for cultural transmission. They are intimately tied to language. But they are a prosthetic language too.
Art—with a capital A— is often something that many people don’t like or don’t understand. Art—with a little a—we engage with all the time. Everything, now, is designed and you are constantly, whether you are aware of it or not, engaged in interactions through and with designed artifacts. This is art. We wear clothes. We go to the movies. We read stuff on webpages on our phones. Everything we are looking at can be considered artistic or cultural production.
I like the example of film.
Film allows for rich transmission of cultural ideas. The use of music, spoken language, pacing, the variety of distances to the camera to tell stories with great effect. This sometimes is called Affect. In the late 90s media researcher Annie Lang, from the Indiana University, described how the editing of image sequences in films could increase the heart-rate of the viewer or how larger images that allowed for an extreme close-up make us more aroused. That makes sense if you think about it. The only time we really see someone up close is when we are extremely comfortable with them. Annie Lang’s work seems almost mundane but if you really peel back the layers you get to the idea that we constantly see images and, although we know they are artificial and we intellectualize their artificiality, our bodies may be reacting different. They might explain why we feel energized or exhausted watching action sequence but I am getting off topic. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran tells us our mirror neurons allow us to observe and learn. This is really important. It means that we can learn motor skills from observation. It also means that we can form empathetic relationships with those we observe. This is why film may have such impact. If we use images to form quasi-pictorial events in our minds, then we use images to think, to communicate, and even to connect.
I didn’t find humor in a lot of the written jokes I found online as I mentioned before. They seemed old and tired and mired in boring, often repeated themes. But I did find something really interesting. I found shared YouTube videos, vines, tik toks, instagram images, you name it. Our daily lives are now awash in images and short movies. The wonderful thing about this new media landscape is that it allows us to share across cultures and we use these tools primarily through our phones to celebrate, inspect, challenge, transmit, enhance our culture, our language. As we share images we potentially give them to a global audience. Embedded in those are our language and clues to our culture.
Problems with new media are not, as you might believe, that we are developing a global monoculture. Exclusivity or a questioning of the value of discourse. One problem that has arisen is the manipulation of social media platforms through paid armies of trolls (or people to try to disrupt and sway the discussion). These armies of influencers might now be artificially intelligent but that is a whole other conversation. My point here is that the battle for representation—the very heart of the discussion about language and culture is happening on multiple fronts.
I am going to shift gears here. I want to talk a little about representation and language.
Between Washington State University and the University of Idaho there are over 650 study abroad opportunities in 50 or more countries. But you don’t have travel to experience different cultures. Between the two universities there are over 3000 students from over 100 countries.
Events like this one and the various events that celebrate various cultures through entertainment and food are extremely important. They make culture and, by default, language, a multi-sensory experience. The richness of each culture can be felt, experienced. Even tasted!
How, then, can a mediated experience to compete? How can an instagram image or YouTube video even compare?
For the answer, let’s go back in time to 1927.
The famous Bengali film director Satyajit Ray is 6 years old and studying at a school founded by Rabindranath Tagore. For those of you who don’t know who Tagore was, he is an unparalleled Bengali poet who, in 1913, became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore’s prominence is such that he composed both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems.
You can imagine how larger-than-life he would appear to a 6 year old boy.
Ray gives his notebook to Tagore to sign an autograph. Tagore does so but also writes a poem:
বহু দিন ধোরে, বহু ক্রোশ দুরে
বহু ব্য্য় কোরি, বহু দেশ ঘুরে
দেখিতে গিযাছি পর্বত্ মালা,
দেখিতে গিযাছি সিন্ধু দেখা হয় নাই দু চোখ মেলিযা ঘর হোতে শুধু দুই পা ফেলিযা এক্তি ধানের শিশের উপর এক্তি শিশির বিন্দু
For many years, I have travelled to many lands far away.
I've gone to see the mountains. I’ve been to view the oceans.
But I failed to see what lay not two steps from my home.
On a sheaf of paddy grain – a glistening drop of dew.
The power of that little poem is the world it creates. You can imagine Satyajit Ray reading that everyday and how the imagery produced in his mind’s eye focus from the wide world to one tiny aspect of Ray’s everyday life. The poem, to me, told Ray to cherish what he had and to look closely to appreciate it.
In 1961 Satyajit Ray directed a film that was a biography of Tagore. The connective tissue further binds the lives of these two men is language they share but also an ability to share the complexities of culture through their various media. Satyajit Ray continues Tagore’s legacy but in a multi-modal fashion with words and images.
Film is visual storytelling and images can be poetry.
Just as poetry is imagery.
Tagore and Ray were masters at mining the quasi-pictorial for choice words or images intended for maximum impact.
We all don’t have the training, talent, or, frankly, the patience to be a writer or filmmaker of Tagore or Ray’s stature. But we have at our disposal the tools to create relevant experiences. Whether they are funny or heartwarming. Frightening even. Mundane. Whatever.
The technology now provides a device to record and network to share. And that’s what I encourage you all to do.
Share your culture. Share your ideas. Get them out there in the world. Celebrate and communicate.
Share your humor. Your traditional songs. Your craft. Your music. Share how to make your food.
Tell your stories.
But, perhaps, what is more important is to explore outside your own culture. Take the time to listen, watch, experience other people’s efforts.
To help you out I may some recommendations. Explore:
Native American Rap—in particular Supaman, Frank Waln, and Drezus
International gaming communities and their traditions
K-pop fan cultures
Japanese street fashion
Ghanian Cuisine
Vietnamese Street food
The Virtual reality storytelling of Nyla Innuksuk, an Inuit filmmaker
There is so much more to experience if we venture outside of our proverbial comfort zone. Use the device to not only produce a representation of your world but to find and connect to someone else’s culture.
It is easy and enjoyable. The best way to preserve a culture and language is not only to disseminate it but be an audience for another and to make connections.
Thank you for sharing your time with me. Enjoy your evening.