Any Canadians feeling smug about our general left-wingedness as compared to USA should read Christie Blatchford's article today in the Globe and Mail, an article about crimes committed by people wearing hoods being more heinous than those by perpetrators who are boldly bare-faced (no outright mention of skin colour...), an article that begins and ends with her $200 trip to the hair salon. Actually, I take that back: nobody should read it, but in case you feel like getting all steamed up, here's the link. I am finding it extremely disturbing that degrading images of Iraqis are still being splattered, now with musical soundtrack and voice-over narration (as on CBC's "The National"), all over the mainstream broadcast news. We have devolved the function of this footage from breaking information to yet more vaguely titillating eye-candy, a transition that opens the door for idle, decadent speculation such as Blatchford's. Reminds me of the now too famous 1968 photograph by Eddie Adams of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner. It might be my ignorance, but I can't think of any images of white people in extremes of dehumanisation that have been adopted in this fashion, recontextualised, and mutliplied a million times by the western press.
Jesus the Christ. Oh wait, despite the images he probably wasn't a tall, blond Northern European.
In the Republic of Tejas, the martyrdom of Jim the Bowie, Davy the Crockett, etc. are celebrated, but this all happened before CNN.
you're right about JC. sex sex sex (and violence)
There's Oliviero Toscani's photograph of the dead AIDs victim for Bennetton, but that salacious presentation was self-conscious in a way that this is embedded, and while I was prudishly appalled that the moment of death was turned to the task of selling sweaters, the image itself didn't read as dehumanising.
Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. It isn't any more or less dehumanizing than Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting the Viet Cong soldier. It bothers me to see the moment of someone's death so public.
"It bothers me to see the moment of someone's death so public." ...yeah, me too. But I don' think replication of the Lee Harvey Oswald image is nearly as widespread as the Eddie Addams photo. It certainly isn't in Canada - I can't picture it off hand. (Nor is the Bennetton ad, for that matter). Anyhow, I'm not calling for racial equality of dehumanising photographs. Just it would be nice if these horrible things didn't turn into media wallpaper.
"White-hot anger", whether consciously registered or not, resonates enough in the context of the article to suggest a racialized process of self-identification - especially when Blatchford bases her argument on the (perceived) inherent moral superiority of Americans.
Contributing to the malaise.... Some artist friends of mine reenacted this image in the 80s. Everyone wore normal clothes and mimed the poses of the principals. It's very familiar in the States.
thanks for the link. Now that I see it, I do of course recognise it. (not everyone in Canada is as unversed in the Kennedy imagery as I am...wouldn't want to give the wrong impression...but I still think the Viet Cong execution image would be more widely recognised)
Cady Noland appropriated the photo for a piece in the early 90s. The cut out figure of Oswald was laminated on aluminum; the life-sized, stand up sculpture had jigsawed "bullet holes" with wadded up American flags stuffed in them. Oswald's pain-contorted face was on the cover of Artforum. Around '94, the Dallas Museum of Art's then-curator tried to get the Museum to buy Noland's piece, but the trustees weren't having it. I saw it when it was on display at the Museum during the trial period.
Did you like it?
Not sure what it adds, but there was the truck driver who was pulled out of his cab during the L.A. riots. That was played over and over and over...
here is noland's "oozewald" piece. do you like it? and jim refers to trucker reginald denny.
Even if Oswald is the white guy whose public death became famous in pictures, that was 1963, quite a while ago! and not even within most of our lifetimes. Yet, there is the Viet Cong assassination, the beating of Rodney King (not a death, but close).
It's true that American (in particular) televison steers clear of white death gore. I'm trying to remember if there were any pictures of slain white kids in Columbine. If there were, they haven't turned into iconic images.
Anyhow, Sally, you're totally right the Iraqi prisoner images are being plastered everywhere with such disrespect you can taste the prejudice. It's like the images and the articles about the images don't match up. The articles are all about the fall of Rumsfeld and Bush, while the pictures seem to be saying this is an Iraqi at the bottom of the military heap, some sort of rat.
Interesting that the US military will try and block images of the caskets of fallen soldiers, yet they'll show Iraqi's on dog leashes.
.... and I don't think JC's death counts, since his death is considered virtuous not humiliating.
Without the images in public view, could we even conceive of the possible downfall of Bush and Rumsfeld?
Jennifer, of course they should have been made public! I think the point being made here is that they are no longer functioning as information, but are now being used as mere illustration.
Those BLAIR-WITCH meets FASTWURMS humiliation pix have to have been approved for media release by president shrub and his power buddies don't ya think? More psychological warfare.
... and the Nick Berg story reminds me of Costa-Gravas movie "MISSING" just read the interviews with his Dad and see if you don't agree. Meanwhile, check out the latest counter spin on today's DRUDGE report. Kerry's daughter doing a "Janet Jackson" and all kinds of brilliant republican jokes about "cannes." Yow!
Bill, thanks for the link (a few posts up) to Cady Nolan's Oozewald. I think I like it ... it looks a bit painfully didactic, but also hard to tell from the image, without any scale. There is an interview with her here from 1990 that I definitely like very much indeed. She says extremely interesting things about violence in America.
"From the point at which I was making work out of objects I became interested in how, actually, under which circumstances people treat other people like objects. I became interested in psychopaths in particular, because they objectify people in order to manipulate them. By extension they represent the extreme embodiment of a culture's proclivities; so psychopathic behavior provides useful highlighted models to use in search of cultural norms. As does celebrity."
Also, Bill, your Reginald Denny link above provides information on how this boundary between information and illustration is seen in the eyes of copyright law:
"There can be no doubt that the beating of Reginald Denny was newsworthy, but even 30 seconds was too much in KCAL's case. The fact that the material is newsworthy is a factor in favor of fair use, but not determinative if some value flows to the broadcaster at the expense of the copyright holder. And it seems that judges believe such uses can have a commercial purpose in news programs, if only a ratings increase."
as i recall oozewald is about 6' tall. but a cut out like a big paper (honycomb aluminimum) doll.
on the burning monk photo-op - this image has been co-opped by r*ge *g*inst the m*chine for merch images.
Way to minimize a white man's public death! (It was before our time!) Just kidding, but it is a good counterexample to the "all photo-exploitation is racist" argument. Here's another: the business suited bodies falling from the Twin Towers, which have a way of gratuitously popping up when you least expect them (e.g., those "2001: the Year in Pictures" type anthologies). Ni-i-ice. Thanks, media.
Did I like the Noland? At first I thought it was too easy or facile, and that she was only compounding the death-exploitation of publicizing the original photo. But wasn't it part of a larger installation scheme? I think it was one of many prefabricated objects she was including in her scatterworks towards the end. I like her project as a whole and I'm not sure if individual works should be discussed in terms of object-delectation, even if they were being marketed that way. I'm not sure it would have made any sense for the DMA to own it as a stand-alone object, without the context of "American detritus" and media-inspired nihilism her installations addressed. Its rejection by the Museum, interesting as that was, doesn't necessarily make it more important. But I could probably argue for it, as well. Need more information. Believe in the artist; on the fence about the piece. Good find by Bill on the RATM use of the monk. Crying all the way to the bank.
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Any Canadians feeling smug about our general left-wingedness as compared to USA should read Christie Blatchford's article today in the Globe and Mail, an article about crimes committed by people wearing hoods being more heinous than those by perpetrators who are boldly bare-faced (no outright mention of skin colour...), an article that begins and ends with her $200 trip to the hair salon. Actually, I take that back: nobody should read it, but in case you feel like getting all steamed up, here's the link. I am finding it extremely disturbing that degrading images of Iraqis are still being splattered, now with musical soundtrack and voice-over narration (as on CBC's "The National"), all over the mainstream broadcast news. We have devolved the function of this footage from breaking information to yet more vaguely titillating eye-candy, a transition that opens the door for idle, decadent speculation such as Blatchford's. Reminds me of the now too famous 1968 photograph by Eddie Adams of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner. It might be my ignorance, but I can't think of any images of white people in extremes of dehumanisation that have been adopted in this fashion, recontextualised, and mutliplied a million times by the western press.
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 5:33 am
Jesus the Christ. Oh wait, despite the images he probably wasn't a tall, blond Northern European.
In the Republic of Tejas, the martyrdom of Jim the Bowie, Davy the Crockett, etc. are celebrated, but this all happened before CNN.
- mark 5-17-2004 5:47 am
you're right about JC. sex sex sex (and violence)
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 5:51 am
There's Oliviero Toscani's photograph of the dead AIDs victim for Bennetton, but that salacious presentation was self-conscious in a way that this is embedded, and while I was prudishly appalled that the moment of death was turned to the task of selling sweaters, the image itself didn't read as dehumanising.
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 5:58 am
Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. It isn't any more or less dehumanizing than Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting the Viet Cong soldier. It bothers me to see the moment of someone's death so public.
- tom moody 5-17-2004 6:48 am
"It bothers me to see the moment of someone's death so public." ...yeah, me too. But I don' think replication of the Lee Harvey Oswald image is nearly as widespread as the Eddie Addams photo. It certainly isn't in Canada - I can't picture it off hand. (Nor is the Bennetton ad, for that matter). Anyhow, I'm not calling for racial equality of dehumanising photographs. Just it would be nice if these horrible things didn't turn into media wallpaper.
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 7:44 am
"White-hot anger", whether consciously registered or not, resonates enough in the context of the article to suggest a racialized process of self-identification - especially when Blatchford bases her argument on the (perceived) inherent moral superiority of Americans.
- tshirttheory (guest) 5-17-2004 7:56 am
Contributing to the malaise.... Some artist friends of mine reenacted this image in the 80s. Everyone wore normal clothes and mimed the poses of the principals. It's very familiar in the States.
- tom moody 5-17-2004 8:29 am
thanks for the link. Now that I see it, I do of course recognise it. (not everyone in Canada is as unversed in the Kennedy imagery as I am...wouldn't want to give the wrong impression...but I still think the Viet Cong execution image would be more widely recognised)
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 10:36 am
Cady Noland appropriated the photo for a piece in the early 90s. The cut out figure of Oswald was laminated on aluminum; the life-sized, stand up sculpture had jigsawed "bullet holes" with wadded up American flags stuffed in them. Oswald's pain-contorted face was on the cover of Artforum. Around '94, the Dallas Museum of Art's then-curator tried to get the Museum to buy Noland's piece, but the trustees weren't having it. I saw it when it was on display at the Museum during the trial period.
- tom moody 5-17-2004 10:52 am
Did you like it?
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 11:24 am
Not sure what it adds, but there was the truck driver who was pulled out of his cab during the L.A. riots. That was played over and over and over...
- jim 5-17-2004 4:51 pm
here is noland's "oozewald" piece. do you like it? and jim refers to trucker reginald denny.
- bill 5-17-2004 5:56 pm
Even if Oswald is the white guy whose public death became famous in pictures, that was 1963, quite a while ago! and not even within most of our lifetimes. Yet, there is the Viet Cong assassination, the beating of Rodney King (not a death, but close).
It's true that American (in particular) televison steers clear of white death gore. I'm trying to remember if there were any pictures of slain white kids in Columbine. If there were, they haven't turned into iconic images.
Anyhow, Sally, you're totally right the Iraqi prisoner images are being plastered everywhere with such disrespect you can taste the prejudice. It's like the images and the articles about the images don't match up. The articles are all about the fall of Rumsfeld and Bush, while the pictures seem to be saying this is an Iraqi at the bottom of the military heap, some sort of rat.
Interesting that the US military will try and block images of the caskets of fallen soldiers, yet they'll show Iraqi's on dog leashes.
- lola-x 5-17-2004 6:16 pm
.... and I don't think JC's death counts, since his death is considered virtuous not humiliating.
- lola-x 5-17-2004 6:17 pm
Without the images in public view, could we even conceive of the possible downfall of Bush and Rumsfeld?
- Jennifer McMackon (guest) 5-17-2004 6:32 pm
Jennifer, of course they should have been made public! I think the point being made here is that they are no longer functioning as information, but are now being used as mere illustration.
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 6:48 pm
Those BLAIR-WITCH meets FASTWURMS humiliation pix have to have been approved for media release by president shrub and his power buddies don't ya think? More psychological warfare.
... and the Nick Berg story reminds me of Costa-Gravas movie "MISSING" just read the interviews with his Dad and see if you don't agree. Meanwhile, check out the latest counter spin on today's DRUDGE report. Kerry's daughter doing a "Janet Jackson" and all kinds of brilliant republican jokes about "cannes." Yow!
- Pete Dako 5-17-2004 6:56 pm
Bill, thanks for the link (a few posts up) to Cady Nolan's Oozewald. I think I like it ... it looks a bit painfully didactic, but also hard to tell from the image, without any scale. There is an interview with her here from 1990 that I definitely like very much indeed. She says extremely interesting things about violence in America.
- sally mckay 5-17-2004 7:03 pm
Also, Bill, your Reginald Denny link above provides information on how this boundary between information and illustration is seen in the eyes of copyright law: