Lab Activity: R2020

This blog task assigned by Dr.Dilip Barad as  Lab Activity: R2020.

For more information : Click here.

Activity 1: Character Mapping (Remember → Understand)

Task Using the provided list of characters, generate a Character Map Infographic with any Gen AI tool that supports visual output.

Output

Output :

The character map reveals a recurring pattern in which power operates through institutions rather than individuals, while morality remains largely personal and fragile. Authority in Revolution 2020 is shown as networked—flowing through education, politics, and media—where figures like Gopal Mishra and political agents thrive by aligning ambition with institutional power. Pragmatism consistently proves more rewarded than ethical idealism; survival and success are achieved by compromise rather than resistance. In contrast, moral figures such as Raghav Kashyap and the marginalized farmers occupy peripheral spaces, highlighting how truth-telling lacks structural support. The education sector and media, theoretically moral institutions, are exposed as deeply entangled with corruption and profit. Power thus appears circular and self-reinforcing, sustained by silence, compliance, and transactional relationships. Morality, meanwhile, emerges as isolating and costly, demanding personal sacrifice without guarantee of impact. The map ultimately suggests that in a corrupt ecosystem, ethics survive as individual conviction, not as an institutional force.

Activity 2: Cover Page Critique (Understand → Apply → Analyse)

Cover Page

Task Study the cover page of Revolution Twenty20 and generate an AI-assisted visual or textual analysis.

Infographic

 

Text

The cover of Revolution Twenty20 sets up very specific expectations that align closely with popular, youth-oriented fiction.

Revolution:

The word “Revolution” suggests radical change, rebellion, and idealism, but its stylized presentation—boxed, fragmented, and paired with “Twenty20”—immediately hints at a diluted or compromised revolution. Rather than political upheaval, the cover primes the reader for a personal or moral struggle within a corrupt system. The tagline “Love. Corruption. Ambition.” reframes revolution as internal and social rather than collective or ideological.

Youth:

The silhouetted young figure gazing at the city evokes uncertainty, aspiration, and transition—key markers of youth. The romantic couple in the background reinforces themes of desire and emotional conflict, signaling that youthful dreams are entangled with love and compromise. The imagery suggests young protagonists caught between ideals and survival.

Marketability:

The bold design, high-contrast colors, and minimal detail make the book instantly eye-catching and accessible. It targets urban, English-reading Indian youth by blending romance, ambition, and social critique—Chetan Bhagat’s proven formula.

Typography, colour, symbolism:

The distressed typography conveys instability and tension. Pink-red tones suggest passion and corruption, while the cityscape symbolizes modern India’s promise and moral decay—hallmarks of popular contemporary literature.

Critical Move After generating AI analysis: - Identify at least two interpretive gaps or oversimplifications in the AI response.

Based on the visual evidence from the cover and the character dynamics discussed in our conversation history, here are two interpretive gaps or oversimplifications in the provided analysis:

1. The Cultural Specificity of "Twenty20"

The analysis describes the pairing of "Revolution" with "Twenty20" as merely a hint at a "diluted" revolution. However, this is an oversimplification of a major Indian cultural signifier. In the Indian context, "Twenty20" (or T20) is the fast-paced, highly commercialized, and sensationalized format of cricket. By branding a revolution as "Twenty20," the cover suggests more than just moral compromise; it implies that the struggle for change has been repackaged as entertainment or a fast-paced commodity, mirroring the "Pragmatist" approach of characters like Gopal who navigate systems for "survival and ambition" rather than deep-seated ideological change.

2. The Literal Graphic Subversion of "LOVE"

The analysis notes that the tagline reframes revolution as "internal," but it misses the precise graphic interplay within the title itself. The word "LOVE" is not just "paired" with the title; it is encased in a neon pink box that replaces or consumes the central letters of "REVOLUTION". This visual choice suggests that the "Revolution" is not merely "internal," but is actively hijacked or sidelined by romantic pursuits. Drawing from the character map, this aligns with how Aarti Pradhan (the "Social Link") serves as the primary motivator for the male protagonists' actions, potentially suggesting that their "revolutionary" activities are actually secondary to their competition for her affection.

Activity 3: Infographic from Video Discourse (Analyse → Evaluate)

Task Using a Gen AI tool, generate an infographic based on the given video discussion on Popular Literature.

Video: 

Infographic:

Evaluation Criteria Critically evaluate the infographic by answering: 1. Does it clarify or flatten theoretical complexity? 2. Is popular literature reduced to market success alone? 3. What ideas are missing, distorted, or exaggerated?

1. Clarification vs. Flattening of Theoretical Complexity

The infographic clarifies the functional differences between the two genres by providing a structured binary (e.g., Answering vs. Questioning). It successfully illustrates the lecture's point that popular literature is designed for "mass accessibility" using "basic, everyday English".

However, it flattens theoretical complexity by categorizing popular fiction characters as strictly "Black and White". Our previous discussion of the Revolution 2020 character map contradicts this; characters like Gopal, the "Pragmatist," represent a nuanced moral middle ground driven by "social pressure" rather than being a "fixed hero or villain". By labeling popular fiction as having "explicit meaning on the surface," the infographic overlooks how these texts can mirror complex social realities, such as the politicization of education or systemic corruption.

2. Reduction to Market Success

The infographic explicitly reduces the value of popular literature to market success.

It states that literary value in this category is "judged by mass sales" and illustrates this with a "Railway Station" bookstall icon.

It characterizes the genre as being "driven by commercial interests" and "formulaic".

In contrast, canonical literature is associated with "Intellectual Capital" and "historical longevity," suggesting that popular works lack depth beyond their immediate commercial cycle.

3. Missing, Distorted, or Exaggerated Ideas

Missing: The infographic misses the "social and cultural capital" mentioned in the lecture. Popular literature is not just a commercial product; it provides a "common narrative style" that resonates with the specific lived experiences of a generation.

Distorted: The claim that popular fiction only deals with "concrete problems" and "relatable themes" like "common life stages" is a distortion. As seen in the Revolution 2020 sources, popular fiction often tackles abstract social issues like institutional corruption and the "diluted revolution," even if it uses a "crystal clear" linguistic approach to do so.

Exaggerated: The "Soap Opera" influence and the "Crystal Clear" principle are exaggerated to create a sharp contrast with "Linguistic Mastery". While popular fiction avoids "complex symbols," it still requires the reader to navigate the "high-stakes themes" of ambition and moral decay that we identified in the cover analysis.

Output:

The infographic succeeds in clarifying broad distinctions between popular fiction and canonical literature, particularly for entry-level readers. Its visual binaries—clarity versus ambiguity, market success versus critical acclaim—offer an immediate framework for understanding contrasting literary modes. However, this clarity comes at the cost of flattening theoretical complexity. Literary theory, especially from cultural studies and reception theory, resists such rigid oppositions, emphasizing hybridity, overlap, and historical transformation.

Popular literature is implicitly reduced to commercial logic, framed largely in terms of accessibility, formula, and mass sales. This overlooks politically radical, stylistically innovative popular texts and ignores how many canonical works (Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare) were themselves market-driven and widely consumed. Market success and literary value are presented as mutually exclusive, a distortion unsupported by literary history.

Several key ideas are missing or underdeveloped. Reader agency is absent: readers are portrayed as passive consumers rather than active meaning-makers. Power structures—publishers, academic institutions, cultural gatekeeping—are not addressed, even though they play a decisive role in canon formation. The infographic also exaggerates moral clarity in popular fiction and ambiguity in canonical texts, reinforcing stereotypes rather than examining textual evidence.

Overall, while the infographic is pedagogically useful, it risks reinforcing hierarchical value judgments instead of encouraging critical interrogation of how literature is produced, circulated, and legitimized.

Activity 4: AI-Generated Slide Deck on Themes (Evaluate → Create)

Task Generate a slide deck (10–12 slides) on the Thematic Study of Revolution Twenty20 using Gen AI. 

Mandatory Themes - Love - Corruption - Ambition - Revolution

             

Where does AI help, and where does it fail as a literary critic?

AI proves most useful as a structuring and synthesizing tool in literary criticism. It efficiently identifies recurring patterns—such as power, morality, ambition, or institutional corruption—and can map relationships between characters, themes, and symbols with clarity. In the context of infographics and PPT analyses, AI helps by translating complex arguments into accessible frameworks, offering comparative language, and generating coherent critical vocabulary. It is particularly effective in producing preliminary readings, summarizing theoretical positions, and making implicit patterns visible for novice readers.

However, AI’s limitations become evident at the level of critical judgment and theoretical reflexivity. AI often slips into moralistic or simplistic binaries, privileging ambiguity over clarity, difficulty over accessibility, and canonical prestige over popular appeal. These hierarchies are reproduced rather than interrogated. As seen in earlier analyses, AI tends to treat concepts like “depth,” “intellectual capital,” or “ethical ambiguity” as inherent virtues, failing to question how such values are historically produced by institutions, markets, and power structures.

Moreover, AI lacks a genuine sense of historical consciousness and positionality. It can reference theory but does not experience ideological tension; as a result, it may naturalize canon formation, reduce popular literature to market success, or overlook reader agency. Its criticism often sounds authoritative while remaining derivative, echoing dominant academic discourses rather than challenging them.

Crucially, AI does not possess interpretive risk—it avoids uncertainty, contradiction, and ethical discomfort, which are central to advanced literary criticism. Where a human critic may dwell in ambiguity or question their own assumptions, AI seeks resolution and balance.

In sum, AI is most effective as a critical assistant—a generator of frameworks, language, and comparisons—but it fails when asked to function as an independent literary critic. Without self-reflexivity, ideological awareness, and lived engagement with texts, AI analysis must remain provisional rather than authoritative.

Thank You!!!