Reality is beside the point
Some thoughts on understanding the pictures of the Israel-Hezbollah war
By AcademicElephant Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (27) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Ten days ago, I wrote about the methodological parallel between the construction of Guido Reni's Massacre of the Innocents and the staged photographs that were used to disseminate the Qana "massacre." Some of those commenting on the post maintained that the pictures stood for themselves--that regardless of the artifice of those that staged them, the subject matter--the slaughtered innocents--was tragic beyond questioning. According to such logic, these images stand for themselves and are by their very subject independent of any ulterior agenda. In my opinion, these comments confirmed the effectiveness of the photographs, and helps to explain why such images keep on coming out of the region. (There's more on the plethora here and here, thanks Instapundit.)
In terms of the Qana pictures, I understand that images of dead children are profoundly disturbing. Believe me, I understand. But that doesn't mean they can't be manipulated to influence a target audience. Guido Reni and his seventeenth-century viewers understood this--as do those who those who composed those shocking, heartbreaking and riveting photographs of Qana. They know their audience quite well--they know we've become accustomed to having the realities of war brought home to us by images that use an established visual vocabulary to confirm the narrative the public is predisposed to believe. This springs to mind--an image in which the central child's Christ-like pose "makes" the picture. Can you blame those who want to see the west defeated in the current conflict for copying out of that playbook? Nothing would please them more than to make Lebanon into Israel's Vietnam. Since a straight military victory is impossible, they're using these images to get their point across and rally sympathy for their cause, which will then sap support for Israel. They're none too subtle in this effort as they're employing a set pattern of quasi-Christian iconography as their models--the massacred innocents. The grieving mother. And most recently, the sacrificial lamb. Is it any wonder these evocative pictures are striking such a chord? Or that their makers keep manufacturing them? And so the trickle of propaganda photos masquerading as "news" in the western press has turned into a flood.
Read on . . .
Other bloggers have done yoeman's work identifying the artificiality of these images; I'm interested in how they are constructed, because if we understand how these pictures are being formed we can better understand (and/or combat) the agenda of those who are forming them. A few days ago, for example, this photograph was featured on the New York Times website as an image of a victim of an Israeli "attack" on Tyre buried under the rubble. After an eagle-eyed soul pointed out this man was a little too dust (and wound) free, the Times retracted its original caption but has stuck with the picture, now asserting that the man was not dead but wounded, and that he fell while aiding in the search-and rescue.
To my eye, the photograph featured in the New York Times is a pastiche of two well-known, dare I say canonical, images from the history of western art--the Pieta by Michelangelo and the Raising of Lazarus (itself indebted to the Pieta) by Caravaggio. Let's take a look:
I think we should bear in mind these two particular objects have high media profiles. The Pieta, for example, has elicited such strong response that it was famously attacked by a deranged young man with a hammer and a Christ complex. For its part, the Lazarus has gained contemporary fame as Caravaggio has emerged as the hero of popular biographies and films, in which this picture inevitably serves as the artist's visual plea for redemption. I find it a little hard to accept the striking similarities--notably the abdomens, as well as the tilt of Christ's head in the Pieta, which is a reverse match for that of the young man in Tyre and the dramatic upraised arm that comes straight out of the Lazarus--as coincidence.
The Times is saying, with a straight face, that this young man in Tyre fell into this composition.
The editors of the Times and their fellow dupes among the MSM might want to bear in mind that the PR effort being mounted by Hezbollah in this conflict, undoubtedly with the assistance of their state sponsors, is far more sophisticated than what they might have attempted ten years ago, and much more attuned to what will play to a sympathetic western audience. Of course the organizers of this scene may just have had a general impression that a number of images similar to the Michelangelo and/or Caravaggio exist, but I'm inclined to give them a little more credit because it seems pretty clear that making the connection between this image and the tradition represented by these two objects was more important to them then making this photo look "real." I think they knew that if they were to invoke these images that float around in the general cultural consciousness of the west, they would make an instant visual connection with an enormous audience--an audience that would then identify them as victims--and not just any victims. The dramatic, prone figure in particular takes on a specifically Christ-like resonance as he is not an individual but a symbol of Everyvictim, who will, like Christ and Lazarus, rise again against impossible odds through the grace of God.
This picture isn't "photo-journalism." It's an attempt at a modern day icon.
As such, this picture and its many fellows need to be understood as illustrations of a tightly controlled narrative that might be called the Passion of Lebanon. That narrative has been constructed by those who are hostile to Israel and its action against Hezbollah, and consider the Lebanese people martyrs to unprovoked aggression from the west. They have found a willing and complicit outlet for their product in the Arab media, as would be expected. I do not think that their authenticity matters much to a mass Middle Eastern audience, which is accustomed to such visual rhetoric. They understand the narrative, and the iconography that expresses it. It is perhaps somewhat more startling that the western media, with its vaunted quest for unbiased and unvarnished reality, has been so eager to accept without question these artificial creations as documentary evidence of the "truth on the ground." Streiff had some choice words on this subject on Friday, and I strongly recommend his post.
In the US we are conditioned to understand such a photo from such a source as a primary document like a transcript of a live video feed, and it seems that those who are predisposed to sympathize with the narrative being peddled here are not willing or able to suspend that automatic response and see these images clearly. And so the Times cannot let go of the fact that what it has here is not a work of journalism that records events but a work of artifice that attempts to shape them. Once we understand it as such, we will be much better able to understand the motivations and intentions of those who created the image. I think the questions that then emerge are quite edifying--such as why cast this Muslim tragedy in such overtly Christian terms? Are we to subconsciously read this man as another martyr to the viciousness of the Jews? If not, why was it so important to get an image out of a young and beautiful man prone among the ruins? Weren't there enough real victims? Do the real victims even matter, either to Hezbollah or to those staging the photo? Is "reality" per se beside the point?
You know, that is a very interesting and revealing picture once you have eyes to see it for what it is.
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Reality is beside the point 27 Comments (0 topical, 27 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Their desire to make others do what they want no matter how idiotic it may be. Fake but accurate, and the George Bush DUI stories are classics. Its not about promoting a particular candidate, its about demonstrating they can control the election. With Israel if the left can make the Israelis into the bad guys they will have achieved their greatest propaganda victory imaginable.
AE, as always, you are absolutely right.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - "We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy."
See The World In HinzSight!
don't cause me the loss of a moment's sleep. Given that their parents put them, or leave them, in a place where terrorists are using them as shields and propaganda tools, I can't even consider calling those deaths "tragic".
The left wants "reality", reality is that Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorists. The people who support them are terrorists. The Times will never figure this out.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
We've talked about this before, but maybe let me try a different approach:
Maybe I can't convince you that not everyone still in southern Lebanon isn't staying of their own volition (but it still strikes me as pretty crazy that you'd believe this). But give me this much: certainly you'd agree with me that the kids don't have a choice here. They go with their parents. Most of them aren't even moral agents. So, how can you say that "Lebanese and Palestinian children dieing in war" doesn't effect you, when they can't be anything but innocent? I mean, blame their parents if you must, but they are not their parents!
that as long as a terrorist group chooses to live among civilians, store their rockets, ammunition, weapons and explosives among civilians, set up their headquarters among civilians and mount their attacks among civilians there's just nothing anybody can do but absorb the the attacks (on their civilians) because a child might get injured or killed.
You're right, I agree that the kids generally have no choice about being there. They aren't likely to be moral agents. And if their parents don't give a hoot if they get killed and are willing to offer them up as "martyrs" then I don't care one whit about their deaths. My only hope is the same ordinance that killed the child killed it's parents too.
If you feel the need for moral outrage, aim it at Hezbollah and Hamas and the rest of the Islamofacists who aim their attacks on civilian targets, proudly videotape the brutal murder of innocent civilians (see Nick Berg), and use "Muslim civilians" as shields behind whom they launch their attacks and store their munitions.
The only issue I have with the Coalition forces in Iraq and the Israeli forces in Lebanon and Gaza is that we are not killing enough "civilians" and their innocent children. Golda Meir had it exactly right when she said [Becker translation], The killing and madness will stop when Muslims love their children more than they hate Jews. The problem is not dead children, it's a people and their 9th Century religion that puts no value on the lives of those very children. Keep in mind, during the Iran/Iraq war, the Imams in Iran recruited children to clear Iraqi mine fields. Their parents willingly sent them off to die for Allah. At first they ran through the mine fields, setting off the mines, but that resulted in too many injured kids. So the Iranian army would wrap the kids in a rug and roll them across the mine field. Sometimes they could get two or three mines and the injury rate went way down... they all died.
Sorry, but there is no approach that will make me care about dead civilians to extent that the Israelis or the Coalition should entertain a cease fire. The death of those kids makes me even madder at the inhuman monsters that freely sacrifice their children and then get all remorseful when the cameras show up.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
You seem to think that I say (or, more precicely, that it's a logical extension of what I say) that, since Hezbollah hides in civilian populationsm "there's just nothing anybody can do but absorb the the attacks (on their civilians) because a child might get injured or killed." But it doesn't take much to realize that I've never suggested this and that nothing of the sort follows.
Then you say, "And if their parents don't give a hoot if they get killed and are willing to offer them up as "martyrs" then I don't care one whit about their deaths." So, let me ask you this: do you feel anything for children killed by their parents?
Finally, this: "The problem is not dead children, it's a people and their 9th Century religion that puts no value on the lives of those very children." I only quote it because the irony is what some would describe as "delicious."
I feel unbridled anger toward their "parents". Don't get me wrong, just because I don't care if they die doesn't mean I don't "feel" for them. My whole point here is that I have no intention of letting some sappy feelings get in the way of waging war against a group of inhuman animals.
You might think the irony is delicious, but I will say that I do put great value on the lives of those kids. But I don't happen to value their lives more than the lives of the people that the terrorists their parents are supporting (or being held hostage by) are targeting. Given a choice between killing Muslim children who are being used as hostages or shields in order to kill the terrorists or allowing civilians to be murdered unhindered by those terrorists, I don't need a second thought. I will protect the targets of terrorism at the, hopefully, very great expense to the terrorists.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
I more or less agree with everything you say here. But, you do have to admit that there's some... tension... between statements like saying that you "don't care one whit about their deaths" (just one post above) and "I do put great value on the lives of those kids." But, let's ignore that -- the point is that in order to make your omelette, you're gonna crack a few eggs. That is what your war entails. Maybe, at the end of the day it'll be worth it -- but to say things like, "I won't loose sleep over these innocent peoples' deaths" just makes you look callous beyond comprehension. That's all I'm getting at right now.
comprehension. I try to live with pretty simple rules because if they get too complicated I get lost. Rule One is: If you want to engage in a discussion or negotiation, I'm willing to. I will operate in good faith, be honest in my dealings (I'll do what I say), and I'll try really, really hard to put things in simple terms. But, mess with my family & you won't live long enough to regret it.
Translate that to war, the broken eggs are an apt analogy. I would only say that I wouldn't be cracking a "few" eggs.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
You seem to think that I say ... that, since Hezbollah hides in civilian populationsm "there's just nothing anybody can do but absorb the the attacks (on their civilians) because a child might get injured or killed."
Thats my reading of what you are saying. If thats not what you are arguing then maybe you need to be a little clearer.
I've read over what I've said again, and I just don't see what would give yout his idea. What I've said is that we can take some subset of the casualties of this war -- children killed in Lebanon -- and hold that they are innocent people, and that their deaths ought to have some kind of emotional resonance with us. What's pretty amazing is that I think that this claim is about as uncontroversial as they come -- I'm not saying what Israel should do (that's covered elsewhere), I'm not saying who started it (Hezbollah, in this case), I'm not saying who shoulders most of the blame (again, Hezbollah), anything like that. All that I'm saying is the remarkably obvious claim that the deaths of innocent people should be seen as a bad thing. Why is the onus on me to be clearer?
Then you are saying something all of us already take for granted. No one here, I imagine, would celebrate that a 4 yeard old just died. But none of us are going to go out of our way to lament that he died because his parents allowed the Hezbos to set up a rocket launching site inside their home. We're going to be angry at the Hezbos and the kid's parents and we're going to continuing killing all of the above until the 1 group stops letting the 2nd group do what it is doing and we can stop killing the 3rd group right alongside the others...
"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself
I've tried for a very, very long time to come up with something worthwhile to say here, but my responses have been, in every draft, rambling and inconclusive. I feel like I should say something, since the line I was pushing last time was referenced here, but I'm just confused on this issue.
What I've been thinking about lately -- and like I've said, I got nothing conclusive, I'm after discussion more than convincing anyone of anything -- is the degree to which manipulation can be appropriate. Here's one possible response: the emotional manipulation of these photographs is [good / okay] because it is [good / okay] to manipulate someone to get them to feel what they ought to be feeling. I might then engage in separate arguments with, say, mbecker about how it is appropriate to feel partially responsible for the deaths of these people, as well as with adriandrews about why is it not appropriate to feel responsible for the deaths of fetuses. But, obviously, those are big arguments, and right now we're talking about manipulation. So, open question: is it okay to manipulate someone in order to push them into an appropriate response?
Possible test cases: parenting (guilt trips, exagerated the risks posed by dangerous behavior), yellow journalism circa late-19th c., art/literature, etc.
seems to me that you are accepting "fake but accurate" as the standard for journalism. Theoretically, they aren't in the business of making us have "appropriate" responses.
No, no. You misunderstand me on two counts: 1) I'm not pushing any particular line here, I really am thinking out loud. 2) I never suggested that these pictures represent some kind of good reporting. I'm talking about the emotional response we feel from them. Maybe this would make more sense in the context of the previous discussion that AE referred to earlier on.
Hezbollah and Hamas will not alter their tactics of terrorism which means they will continue to embed their forces and make war on civilian targets from areas that are populated primarily by "civilians". Would you:
1. Not fire back, absorb the attacks but do nothing?
2. Hope the UN can come up with a solution?
3. Send in SpOps teams who are only allowed to target "fighters" in a way that never endangers a civilian?
4. Offer more territory and release all Hezbollah and Hamas prisoners?
5. Hope the Lebanese army can eventually control the situation?
6. Other?
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
I find it amazing that you would respond to a rather speculative post about the ethics of manipulation with a post which essentially says, "Well, how would *you* solve the problem in the middle east?" Are you like this at dinner parties?
Even funnier is the fact that I've taken this bait in an earlier thread.
and you don't get dinner until it's posted...
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
I'd give you a link to that previous discussion, but the threads are kinda out of whack (it seems like the tree structure of comments got hosed during the upgrade). Anyway, just follow the link that AE gives at the very beginning to his initial post. I have a post in there called "solutions aren't my bag" -- there were a few replies to it, and they're probably hard to see.
But, look -- let me say this again, it's irrelevant right now. I'm talking about a specific issue that is quite separable from the "Well, what should we do about this?" question. Maybe you want to talk about what we should do, but I'm talking about something entirely different right now. To go from talking about the appropriateness of image manipulation to Solving the Big Problems should strike you as a pretty serious threadjack...
Here's my problem. The whole point of manipulating the photos of these dead kids and other "civilian" casualties is to infect world opinion to get Israel to stop bombing. The reason to stop bombing? So Hezbollah can launch attacks against civilian Israeli targets without having to worry about counterattacks.
The "what to do" question is not irrelevant. Since the point of the pictures is to give the terrorists a free hand, it is the logical end of the discussion. After all, what's the point of agonizing concern about the deaths of these kids unless you're willing to either take some action to avoid those deaths or to be willing to accept them (and more) because those deaths are due to the character and nature of the enemy and understand that the priority must be killing the enemy. I'll take the latter.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
you at all.
The issue is not whether or not photos or film can create a visceral response in an audience. We know that to be true.
The question is a simple binary one concerning the propriety of a news organization running photos that have been manipulated or staged.
I think we can all agree that a staged photo is likely to be much more compelling and powerful than a photo of a random scene, no matter how well chosen the scene or skilled the photographer.
If someone wants to hire a gallery and have a showing of these staged Qana photos, etc. and portray them as art then I've got no problem with it. Otherwise, I'd think that everyone who has a regard for truth or for the trade of journalism should be able to unite in saying this stuff is just wrong.
Someone could probably make a timeline of the evolution of MSM journalism. It would include:
1993 - Dateline intentionally explodes truck to "prove" that they can explode accidentally. They fire a few people once they get busted, but of course the story still impacts our landscape via how it affected juries deciding lawsuits etc. There were also several others before this about exploding or misbehaving cars.
2004 - Dan Rather and the bogus Bush papers. This was probably the turning point in the timeline, since Rather would never even admit they were fake, just that they "couldn't be proven true" or some similarly painful wordplay acrobatics.
2006 - Qana etc. If at least one kid gets killed, it's okay to reuse his or her body as needed over the course of days because it's representative of other similar deaths.
The MSM has really become a joke.
Investigate Matthew Brady's staged Civil War photographs, for instance. Or the muckrakers of the progressive era (Jacob Riis and "How the Other half lives." Or the jingoistic press that basically beat the drum for the Spanish-American war in order to sell more papers. Etc, etc.
is that the perveyors of these "staged" photos are trying to shift the blame for these deaths to the Israelis from those who are truly to blame: Hezbollah.
You don't hear the cries for Hezbollah to stop hiding among civilians in the papers carrying these photos. In these same articles you don't see anger towards Hezbollah for starting the war in the first place. These photos are all used to inflame hatred against Israel for daring to attack an enemy that choses to hide behind children in order to get pictures such as these.
I feel terrible for the innocent children killed because Hezbollah chooses to place them in danger. However, the target of my emotions will not shift just because of Hezbollah's and our MSM's propaganda.
One of the talk show hosts made an interesting observation this week. He said that in American culture we value truth above most virtues. In some other cultures they value honor above all else. Such is the case with Hezbollah. They will embrace the most preposterous lie if it preserves honor.
Why is it that so many on the left are eager to display these gory pictures of dead children when they "prove" that Israel is morally equivalent to Hezbollah, yet they are just as unwilling for pictures of dismembered, aborted babies to be displayed? The photos of the consequences of "a woman's right to choose" ought to be displayed, so that the anti-Semitic left can take the beam out of its own eye before straining at the *alleged* speck in that of Israel.