Surrender

 

In 2019, Susan Dupor painted Surrender upon a canvas with oil. Observing this painting initially confused me; interpreting it in the most literal sense, it's a human with a fish's head, having been caught by a fishing line and being pointed at and gestured towards by several hands towards the frame of the image. However, upon closer viewing, we find some more metaphorical observations. For example, from the title of the painting - "Surrender" - and the types of gestures towards the subject (pointing, beckoning) we can assume that it is being asked to surrender. Surrender is only asked of those seen as adversarial or hostile, and as such we may assume that the outside perspective - the hands pointing and gesturing at the subject - believes this human-fish to be a threatening or hostile force that must surrender to them. Similarly, we observe that having bitten the reel, the fish-head is crying, as there is a tear rolling down from its eye. It is clearly sad or distressed, either because it is being forced to surrender or because it has bitten something sharp. To continue our metaphorical analysis, we'll consider the former scenario. 

So, what can we piece together from this painting? There's a fish-man who's been caught from the river being asked to surrender, and the fish-man is saddened by this. Similar to Nike's Air Dri-Goat shoe as analyzed by Allison Kafer, "two distinct bodies appear... The first is the nondisabled body... Unlike the first body, which is unmarked, the second, disabled body is described with utmost specificity: readers learn of its appearance, its inabilities, its quality of life, and its home." The exact same distinction is made here; we learn of a distinction between a different body and the normative one. We are presented with the fish-man's appearance (its naked body, fish head), its inabilities (unable to defend itself, as it has been caught), and its home (the river). Meanwhile, we are presented with the nondisabled, normative body in a completely unremarkable and collective fashion - the various hands bordering the painting. We cannot see their appearance, inabilities, quality of life, or home. Instead, all we know is that they are a collective society, each acting identically in their objective to make the fish-man surrender. 

Why do they want the fish-man to surrender? Like Kafer writes, "able-bodiedness is necessary in order to bridge or transcend the essential separation between human and nature." This very different body is helpless and a cross between human and fish; its disability seems to make the argument that it is neither part of human society, nor part of nature. This could evoke a variety of emotions or compulsions from the able-bodied society, ranging from fear to disgust to anger. In any case, the painting seems to argue that because of its difference - its deviance from able-bodied, normative society - the fish-man does not bear the right to participate in either human society like them, nor in nature like other fishes in the river.

However, this painting challenges these typical representations of disability's exclusion from nature in that the viewer of the painting, in contrast with the hands gesturing at the borders, is compelled to feel sympathetic for the fish-man. Rather than side with the able-bodied, normative society that is fearful of, disgusted by, or angry at the fish-man, we as viewers are clearly seeing how the fish-man is being mistreated; its entire body is smaller than the hands gesturing at it, it's crying from the pain of having been caught (either physical from biting something sharp, or emotionally from being removed from its home), and to our knowledge, it has done nothing wrong to deserve this forced surrender other than simply appearing different from the normative fish or human. Instead of joining in on this effort by the hands to force the fish to surrender, the painting invites us to believe that simply being different isn't valid justification for ostracization and animosity.