Class Notes 2/22: Looking at War Images
We began today's discussion by reviewing how the last class ended. I commented that looking at images of war remains a taboo of our culture, and perhaps a taboo that exceeds that placed around the pornographic image. For both images of war and images of the human body, people often decide that the public spectacle of each is best consumed privately, and under great censorship. As a result, the nightly news edits the most graphic images of war, just as major motion pictures produced by Hollywood studios edit out the most graphic depictions of sexuality between two people.
This kind of censorship may happen for different reasons. What both images have in common, however, is that they both display the human body acted upon by either another body or by weapons. In each case, the horror of watching remains tied to seeing a human body 'violated,' either by another body or through a destructive element. The taboo is the violation; the taboo is the action and the consequence of action. There are, obviously, differences in the violations, and I'm not using that word to equivocate violence and sex. It should nonetheless be of note, however, that the taboo somehow always revolves around the human body's form acted upon outside the conventions of sanctifed ritual: in death, outside a funeral, and in sex, outside of marriage, or outside the purely reproductive purpose of sex.
We reviewed how there are benefits, if we can call them that, to looking at images of war. We want to see the images because they may corresspond to reality, and act as facts that can verify a reality. We want to see the images to remember atrocity and horror ourselves, so that it may not be forgotten. We want to see the images because we believe, perhaps against logic, that seeing the images will somehow prevent war from continuing to take place. We noted, with confusion, how Sontag in Chapter 1 of Regarding the Pain... noted how even the most graphic accounts in film and publication of war images after World War I didn't prevent World War II from occuring.
We also decided that there were clear dangers to viewing images of war. For one, looking at actrocity and trauma is itself traumatic for us. It's also scary and dissapointing to see the "evil" of real people, and what they can do to others. It's also dangerous, at times, because of the latent excitement we feel looking at what's forbidden, and even looking at death itself. Although we didn't discuss why in detail, it's clear that people are sometimes drawn to horrors for their own sake, because they so clearly define what's outside the limits of acceptable sight and information. For instance, many of the highest rated television programs, like CSI Miami, revolve around the displayed corpse of a victim. Although it's fictionalized, the content of the show holds our interest precisely because someone had died, and the show's images often display the quickly edited, but nonetheless visible, bodies of those victims that crime team tries to identify. This excitement is not limited to television shows. We will return to this puzzling condition later in the semester.
In other words, we are shocked by our own fascination with horror.
We then performed an activity based on the kinds of information photographs can allow us to understand. Since we already knew that the meaning of photographs can sometimes become unstable, we looked at an article from the New York Times on Monday, February 20th, and summarized its contents: the war in Iraq involves many different groups claiming power and responsibility. Their arguments often result in violence.
Then, we imagined what the accompanying picture would like for this article.
Next, we looked at the actual picture without the caption. We imagined the potential caption, and tried to identify the contents of the picture.
Finally, we read the actual caption, and tried to find its relationship to the article and to the photo.
We decided that we were quite confused by the information presented and by the photograph itself. The second sentence of the caption read "The body was removed from the shop." It was unclear who the victim was, and who exactly was removing the body. This lack of knowledge about who seemed interesting. It was indictative of how information and knowledge coming from war, whether written or in a photograph, is never precise. It's unstable. We will have to 'look' at war with greater skepticism.
This kind of censorship may happen for different reasons. What both images have in common, however, is that they both display the human body acted upon by either another body or by weapons. In each case, the horror of watching remains tied to seeing a human body 'violated,' either by another body or through a destructive element. The taboo is the violation; the taboo is the action and the consequence of action. There are, obviously, differences in the violations, and I'm not using that word to equivocate violence and sex. It should nonetheless be of note, however, that the taboo somehow always revolves around the human body's form acted upon outside the conventions of sanctifed ritual: in death, outside a funeral, and in sex, outside of marriage, or outside the purely reproductive purpose of sex.
We reviewed how there are benefits, if we can call them that, to looking at images of war. We want to see the images because they may corresspond to reality, and act as facts that can verify a reality. We want to see the images to remember atrocity and horror ourselves, so that it may not be forgotten. We want to see the images because we believe, perhaps against logic, that seeing the images will somehow prevent war from continuing to take place. We noted, with confusion, how Sontag in Chapter 1 of Regarding the Pain... noted how even the most graphic accounts in film and publication of war images after World War I didn't prevent World War II from occuring.
We also decided that there were clear dangers to viewing images of war. For one, looking at actrocity and trauma is itself traumatic for us. It's also scary and dissapointing to see the "evil" of real people, and what they can do to others. It's also dangerous, at times, because of the latent excitement we feel looking at what's forbidden, and even looking at death itself. Although we didn't discuss why in detail, it's clear that people are sometimes drawn to horrors for their own sake, because they so clearly define what's outside the limits of acceptable sight and information. For instance, many of the highest rated television programs, like CSI Miami, revolve around the displayed corpse of a victim. Although it's fictionalized, the content of the show holds our interest precisely because someone had died, and the show's images often display the quickly edited, but nonetheless visible, bodies of those victims that crime team tries to identify. This excitement is not limited to television shows. We will return to this puzzling condition later in the semester.
In other words, we are shocked by our own fascination with horror.
We then performed an activity based on the kinds of information photographs can allow us to understand. Since we already knew that the meaning of photographs can sometimes become unstable, we looked at an article from the New York Times on Monday, February 20th, and summarized its contents: the war in Iraq involves many different groups claiming power and responsibility. Their arguments often result in violence.
Then, we imagined what the accompanying picture would like for this article.
Next, we looked at the actual picture without the caption. We imagined the potential caption, and tried to identify the contents of the picture.
Finally, we read the actual caption, and tried to find its relationship to the article and to the photo.
We decided that we were quite confused by the information presented and by the photograph itself. The second sentence of the caption read "The body was removed from the shop." It was unclear who the victim was, and who exactly was removing the body. This lack of knowledge about who seemed interesting. It was indictative of how information and knowledge coming from war, whether written or in a photograph, is never precise. It's unstable. We will have to 'look' at war with greater skepticism.
posted by Jrc at 12:33 PM
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