The Power of Image in "The Lion and the Jewel" Seda Dalgec College

In "The Lion and the Jewel", the action is ignited by the arrival of a stranger and a magazine in which Sidi’s images are published. Sidi as ‘the Village Belle’ gets greater media coverage than the almighty ‘Bale’ of Ilujinle, and her images as her representations play a significant role in her development. It seems appropriate to compare the ways in which the photographs devour Sidi to Baudrillard’s idea of ‘the three orders of simulacra’, as it primarily deals with the relationship between the representation and the real. With a close reading of several passages that relate to the photographs of Sidi, we see how Sidi’s images first represent her beauty, then threaten her self-image, and finally takes hold of her whole being, each respectively occurring in the three chapters of the play, namely, ‘Morning’, ‘Noon’, and ‘Night’.

Baudrillard, in his book Simulacra and Simulation, discusses that the relation between the real and its representation can be analyzed in three consecutive stages. He names these stages `the three orders`. In the first order, the image requires a real to represent, in the second, the distinction between the real and the image blurs, and in the third, the image precedes and determines the real. When we...