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May 06, 2007
Spare me the images while I try to think....
Commenter "Heather" (in this post by Jules Crittenden) reminded me why I don't watch television: I remember seeing a news photo of a little Vietnamese girl running down the road, because she had been/was being attacked with napalm. That was the iconic photo of the Vietnam war, the one that decided a lot of people that this was was an immoral one, and that the USA should GET OUT.I don't support stoning young women to death any more than I support tying young gay men to fences and beating them to death. (Or, for that matter, shooting young people to death in classrooms.) This is the problem with analyzing any incident. A single incident -- no matter how horrific -- is anecdotal in nature. It's tough enough to read about it and remain logical, without seeing an indelible image of the gruesome atrocity. Images have the paradoxical effect of distorting reality while purporting to depict it accurately, because they force us to look at something we were not there to see, and really cannot see objectively from the comfort of our homes. Images and video are inherently propagandistic in the sense that they influence the emotions in ways that textual accounts do not, and that's even when they are accurate. The napalmed girl is a perfect example. There are no wars in which civilians are untouched by such horrors, but children are also burned to death in fires deliberately set by arsonists in Philadelphia and many other places. A burning child suffers burns, and if people are responsible, they should be punished. Few would argue that a child burned in a building torched by an arsonist is an indictment of society. (Well, I know some would, but that's the radical communitarian view, which is a topic beyond the scope of this post.) But many would (and many did) argue that the napalmed girl is an indictment of American war policy in Vietnam, and war generally. It doesn't seem to matter whether the napalm hit the girl accidentally, whether procedures weren't followed correctly, or whether a criminally culpable rogue soldier might have done it deliberately and needs to be punished. All that matters is the image of the screaming, crying girl. I'm a human being too, and it's hard for me to be subjected to images like that because it distorts my ability to be rational and analytical. I'm sure I would be horrified to watch the video of the little (I see she's 17) Kurdish girl (a member of minority sect with which I'm unfamiliar), but there's no way that watching it could inform me how accurate it is and what really went on. British news reports state that security forces did nothing, and that Kurdish forces have outlawed honor killings, but aren't enforcing the law. Those are the reports, and I'm sure the video is horrible. My inclination would be to want to have those responsible taken out and summarily shot. But before shooting them, I might want to ask who knew her, and what was going on. I'd have to do some kind of investigation, but there's no way to do it from the comfort of my home. When James Byrd was dragged to death in 1998, activists tried to paint him as a victim of a systematized violence by white people against black people, and shortly before the 2000 election, an ad campaign showed a horrific video, while the man's daughter read this: Renee Mullins (voice over): I'm Renee Mullins, James Byrd's daughter.And the text from the radio ads: I'm Renee Mullins. My father was James Byrd, Jr.Needless to say, this ad campaign readily reduced itself to sound bytes which became increasingly misleading -- to the point where people were blaming Bush for Byrd's death. Similarly, the image of Matthew Shepard savagely beaten, tied to this fence and left to die is what people remembered, and his death eventually became an indictment of rural people like the tire-wielding rednecks in Brokeback Mountain. (FWIW, I've argued against these stereotypes, because a young gay man is more likely to be beaten to death in a Northeastern city, but emotion is what matters.) Emotion is the stuff that fuels television, and images are the stock in trade. There's enough news for me to read without my spending time watching things which are deliberately calculated to make my emotions influence my thinking. Thus, I did not once turn on the television during the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings. The downside of this is that I am not "tuned in" to many of the emotions with which other people are constantly tuned in, so I am often at a loss to understand why people get so upset over what I consider news reports to be evaluated. I'm not saying I have any inherent objection to images, or videos, or their use in propaganda. I just don't think that they are any more helpful for me in evaluating what happened than it would be helpful to watch a video of George W. Bush sitting on the toilet. The latter is a regular event which I do not doubt has happened many thousands of times, but it has no logical bearing on anything. The paradox, of course, is that precisely such a video could, in the right hands, provide fuel for those who think Bush should be impeached. Well? Wasn't he caught riding a bicycle while thousands died? And didn't his Secretary of State buy shoes while poor Americans were being eaten by alligators? posted by Eric on 05.06.07 at 09:25 AM
Comments
You might be interested in looking at Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises by David Perlmutter. This book suggests that the 'iconic imagery' isn't all that important when it actually comes to effecting changes in foreign policies. It does provide a 'feeling right' pat on the head to 'caring individuals' (primarily in the media) but as a motivating force, it's pretty ineffective. Imagery can, certainly, stir the emotions. Just how those emotions translate into policy changes is another question. John Burgess · May 6, 2007 01:04 PM That looks like an interesting book. Its case histories are all taken from the pre-Bush era. I wonder if things changed with Mr. Bush? We all know the jokes about Mr. Bush justifying every action he takes with a reference to 9/11. He has certainly invoked that event many times. Is this frequent invocation different from previous Administrations? I can't say, but it sure seems like there might be a difference there. Froblyx · May 6, 2007 01:41 PM One need not go to the Kurdish regions of Iraq to get honor killings. You could just go to Canada! A father killing his five year old daughter "because she was the child of his first wife and another man". That was in Toronto. A mother ordering her daughter killed from India on her cell phone at long distance in Vancouver. A man's sister elopes and he goes gunning for her with an AK-47, kills three, in Calgary. A man kills his wife stabbing her to death because she hinted at having an affair, in Ottawa. A brother kills his sister because he didn't like who she was engaged to, in Ottawa. I am not going to look for pictures of any of these, but complaining about it in the Kurdish region of Iraq and using it as an excuse to leave is extraordinary. Shall we cut off all ties with Canada? Or is this something that is cultural and needs to be addressed by actually getting it through some heads that Individuals have Rights, no matter of their gender? Maybe they can learn that in Canada, and not have this miscreants appeal for a lighter sentence because it was in 'a heat of passion'. Maybe it would be a 'good thing' to stand *for* civilization and *for* the rights of man and actually stand up to those wishing to drag the world back to a time of tyrants and Empires, where women are killed for disgracing a family's 'honor'... and a mother will order her daughter killed because of it. It is too bad the effete Left cannot understand this, and that running from barbarians encourages barbarism and inhumanity. And that confronting same and helping to establish civilization and rights costs lives. Or don't they support that anymore? And now wish to encourage this when it can be confronted and changed by *showing* the better way. Walk the walk. Because that *is* HONOR: "Do what you say. ajacksonian · May 6, 2007 09:31 PM Interesting background on Kim Phuc the "napalm girl") here: http://www.warbirdforum.com/vphoto.htm Note that the photo was taken in 1972, when the American troops were almost completely withdrawn, and the actual attack was a South Vietnamese one - US troops were not involved. See also here: http://www.warbirdforum.com/vphoto.htm andrwedb · May 8, 2007 03:16 PM Post a comment
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I would offer this image:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/01/19/international/19iraq.ready.html
as the iconic image of the war in Iraq, corresponding closely to the image of the Vietnamese girl. The image was on front pages all over the world, but few in the USA saw it:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000980674
I too have mixed feelings about the use of images for propaganda purposes. On the one hand, they are distorted presentations of the truth. On the other hand, EVERY representation of the truth distorts it by leaving out some portion of the truth. Indeed, any great communicator distorts the truth by emphasizing some aspect of the truth that is valuable or useful to the audience.
The real issue here is emotionalism, not realism. People get hyped up by some event and they lose all perspective. A perfect example was 9/11. The horrific images of the plane crashing into the tower, the people falling, the towers falling -- there was an avalanche of heart-rending imagery. And people went nuts. They passed the Patriot Act, a foolish decision that will surely haunt us in the future, they invaded two countries, tortured innocents, killed tens to hundreds of thousands of people -- it will be remembered in history as an insane period.
Is it right to counter images of 9/11 with images of murdered or orphaned children? Yes, but the real problem lies with the people who allow themselves to be manipulated by such images. I recall some years back, an old friend saw Saving Private Ryan. Afterwards he commented to me that, after seeing that movie, he could never support any war. I was struck by his comment. Didn't he already know that war kills people? Saving Private Ryan provided no new information about war -- it merely presented that information in a graphically powerful form.
I wish people were more rational.