Media critics often say that visual images trump words. The claim
makes some sense: Pictures have major impacts on how we see the world.
And we’re apt to pay less attention to photo captions or the voice-overs
that accompany news footage on TV screens.
But when images meet the eye, our reactions depend on our sense of
context. The same news outlets that select certain photos and video
snippets also influence how we look at what we see. The pictures can
have political clout because of prevalent assumptions and attitudes
largely shaped by media.
Many people reacted strongly to President Bush’s “top gun”
imitation when he jetted onto an aircraft carrier near San Diego a
couple of months ago. Bush fans and pliable journalists swooned. More
skeptical observers noticed the shameless manipulation. But everyone was
looking at identical images. The determining factor was not the
choreography of the photo-op but the outlooks of those who watched.
Let’s say a magazine photograph, taken in a war zone, shows a
mother holding a baby covered with blood. Two people -- looking at the
same photo -- could perceive the suffering quite differently. One might
see an unfortunate-though-unavoidable casualty of war. Another might see
a victim of a war crime.
If the finger of blame can be pointed in a direction we already
distrust or despise, then outrage is likely. If the apparent
perpetrators are amorphous or held in high esteem, then we’re more
likely to shrug. (That’s life. Bad luck. War is like that.)
“Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses,”
Susan Sontag comments. “A call for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply
the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic
information, that terrible things happen. ... Information about what is
happening elsewhere, called ‘news,’ features conflict and violence --
‘If it bleeds, it leads’ runs the venerable guideline of tabloids and
24-hour headline news shows -- to which the response is compassion, or
indignation, or titillation, or approval, as each misery heaves into
view.”
Sontag’s book “Regarding the Pain of Others” is a challenge to
common assumptions about the powerful effects of camera work, whether in
print or on television or on museum walls. A strength of the book is
that it helps to clarify the social role of the photograph: “its
meaning -- and the viewer’s response -- depends on how the picture is
identified or misidentified; that is, on words.”
Published four months ago, the book points out: “In the current
political mood, the friendliest to the military in decades, the pictures
of wretched hollow-eyed GIs that once seemed subversive of militarism
and imperialism may seem inspirational. Their revised subject: ordinary
American young men doing their unpleasant, ennobling duty.”
Sontag notes: “The image as shock and the image as cliche are two
aspects of the same presence.” Later on, when she acknowledges that
“harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock,”
Sontag immediately adds: “But they are not much help if the task is to
understand.”
The publication date of “Regarding the Pain of Others” came just
days before the U.S. government launched its all-out war on Iraq. The
Pentagon’s PR innovation of “embedding” reporters and photographers
during the war does not reduce the validity of Sontag’s assessment when
describing “the preferred current American way of war-making.” She
writes: “Television, whose access to the scene is limited by government
controls and by self-censorship, serves up the war as images. The war
itself is waged as much as possible at a distance, through bombing,
whose targets can be chosen, on the basis of instantly relayed
information and visualizing technology, from continents away.”
With its thoughtful explorations of visual images in a world of war
and deprivation, hopefully Sontag’s latest book will disrupt some pat
assumptions. Photographic images “cannot be more than an invitation to
pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for
mass suffering offered by established powers,” she concludes. “Who
caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible? Is it excusable? Was
it inevitable? Is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up
to now that ought to be challenged?”
Such questions are crucial. We should strive to come up with honest
answers -- and take appropriate action.
___________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author of “Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t
Tell You.” For an excerpt and other information, go to:
www.contextbooks.com/new.html#target
For a transcript of Norman Solomon's recent appearance on CNN to debate
the U.S. occupation of Iraq, go to:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0306/27/nfcnn.01.html
