I. What's Past is Prologue
"What are Arabs seeing, and what does that mean for us?" asked Duncan McInnis, the US State Department official in charge of fighting "the war over America's image in the Middle East," in a "Frontline/World" documentary, "News War: War of Ideas" (broadcast March 27, 2007).
"For instance in Iraq. Because Arabs are upset about the presence of armed forces in an Arab country, there are no good images of an American soldier. An American soldier building a hospital in Iraq is still an American soldier in Iraq. In that case, all images are bad. And we need to know that, we need to know that's what they see."
The image is the world's only remaining superpower. Understanding their power of images -- not just what's in the pictures themselves, but what they signify -- is the key to understanding the world and our place within it. It's also, recently, the source of the most deadly and dismal failures in American history. From the attacks of 9/11 through the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Americans' inability to comprehend what they were seeing -- or even to recognize the primacy of the image itself as the representation of events -- has had catastrophic consequences.
German avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was pilloried when he said, shortly after 9/11: "What happened there is—they all have to rearrange their brains now—is the greatest work of art ever... Against that, we composers are nothing.” Whatever it was, precisely, that Stockhausen intended to convey (and he immediately regretted saying it in the fever of the time), his words should have shocked us into seeing what was before our eyes, something to which the hypnotic, endless-looop repetitions of the crashing planes and collapsing buildings on every TV screen, may have blinded us: These images were carefully planned, and executed -- composed not so much as "art," as Stockhausen framed it, but as visual propaganda on a spectacular and terrifying scale -- the epitome of "terrorism" as imagery, and vice-versa.
By focusing upon and recycling certain images (the explosions, the dust clouds coming at the cameras) and repressing or censoring others (the unbearable situation of those trapped in the buildings, the ones who jumped or fell and the ones who stayed, the flesh-and-blood carnage on the streets below), the media lodged indelible images in our brains that we thought we understood ("This is an act of war"), but couldn't quite wrap our heads around.
And what we didn't fully get was the nature of the spectacle. To the perpetrators the human toll was almost incidental -- collateral damage. Far deadlier attacks were possible, but this one had grandiose symbolic potency that, like the footage of the explosion of the Hindenburg, would implant terror in the mind of anyone who saw it. And in the case of 9/11 (before it was given that label), that was the point of creating the images in the first place. It wasn't about the casualties but the pictures.
By keeping the cameras at a distance and focusing on the spectacle, the media made it easy for the disaffected to cheer the abstract assault on American power that the smoking, collapsing towers represented. They didn't have to think too much, or feel too much, about the real-life victims. Of course, that's also exactly how the "embedded" American media would later treat military and civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even the caskets of soldiers killed in combat became, officially, invisible for the first time in American history.
II. Standard Operating Procedure
"America has never been perceived as more isolated and less influential.... The reality is that America's position is undermined, and nobody needs to understand that more than Americans."
-- David Marash, Washington Anchor, Al Jazeera English, in "News Wars: War of Ideas"
Images have as much power as policy. Errol Morris's "Standard Operating Procedure," an investigation of the photographs of American soldiers torturing and abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, is a rigorous inquiry into the meaning of images, and how the amateur photos with which we have become familiar (the ones that undermined American power and influence in the world more than anything since the decision to invade Iraq itself) came to be what they are. The digital shots are powerful propaganda tools, shocks to the conscience, but they are also common photographs -- taken at a particular time and place by individuals, almost instinctively or routinely and without thought, for reasons perhaps even they don't understand.
"America has never been perceived as more isolated and less influential.... The reality is that America's position is undermined, and nobody needs to understand that more than Americans."
-- David Marash, Washington Anchor, Al Jazeera English, in "News Wars: War of Ideas"
As Morris says on the film's web site:
One of my ongoing themes is: photographs can be misleading -- without context we are free to interpret the photographs any way we choose. It's one of the odd and interesting things about photography. You look at a photograph, you think you know what it means, but more often than not you could be wrong. Photographs provide evidence, but usually, it takes some investigative effort to uncover evidence of what?Morris could be talking about the "evidence" some 9/11 conspiracy theorists claimed to find in the photos taken that day, or about the staged toppling of Saddam's statue in Firdos Square, opposite the Baghdad hotel where the press was hedquartered, with expatriate Ahmad Chalabi supporters flown in the night before to act as liberated demonstrators, even as guerilla warfare was taking place in the streets only blocks away. (And that symbolic covering of Saddam's face with an American flag? Whoops. Get an Iraqi flag up there, pronto!)
The most important element in any picture is the frame. What is included, what is left out, the arrangements of elements within the composition, the technology used to capture it, the context in which it was captured, the perceptions and rationalizations that participants and viewers bring to the image after it is recorded... Those are the subjects of "Standard Operating Procedure." (Roger Ebert's review is here.)
Morris's "The Thin Blue Line" was also about a frame -- a man who was falsely convicted of murdering a police officer. A confession by the real killer in the movie itself helped solve the crime. "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" brought together four figures -- a topiary gardner, a lion tamer, a naked mole rat specialist and a robot scientist -- at let you figure out how to fit them into the film's framework. "Mr. Death" (probably the closest to "Standard Operating Procedure") investigated an American inventor of legal execution devices through the larger frame of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and the man's connections with Holocaust deniers. And the Oscar-winning "The Fog of War" re-framed U.S. involvement in Vietnam through the experiences of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who said that the project was doomed from the beginning by America's failure to understand that what we viewed as an aspect of the Cold War, the Vietnamese saw as a civil war.
Late in the film, Morris shows us a cell spattered with blood. The images are nauseating, damning. And yet, they are not at all what they seem.
Through his Interrotron, Morris (and we) look the subjects right in the eye. Their "eyewitness testimony" is, by turns, confused, self-serving, self-deceiving, earnest, defensive, resigned, indignant -- sometimes all in the same interview. Strangely, the only interviewee who seems genuinely angry is Janis Karpinski, the brigadier general in charge of prisons all over Iraq who was made a convenient scapegoat by Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense. She burns with rage, and consequently comes across as one of the more sympathetic and relatable voices in the film. If these photos don't provoke anger, something is wrong.
View image Young lovers Lynndie England and Charles Graner preside over a pyramid of prisoners they've arranged at Abu Ghraib.
Morris interviews all the "seven bad apples" except for Charles Graner, the shutterbug and alleged "ringleader" who appears in so many of the photographs, who made discs of them to give out to friends and fellow soldiers, and who was sexually involved with two of the women in the pictures. (The interviewees include Lynndie England [pregnant by Graner at the time], Megan Ambuhl [now married to Graner], Sabrina Harman, Jamal Davis and Jeremy Sivitz.)
Watching "Standard Operating Procedure" is like exploring a cave. The mouth feels like it's opening into an abyss, and the deeper you venture, the more contours and passageways you begin to make out as your eyes adjust to the darkness.
Morris says this:
I often think that if cameras had not been present, these events would not have occurred. [Consider the timed attacks on the World Trade Center in that light.] The pyramid is an example. Graner, in all likelihood, orchestrated these events for the camera. [...]"The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?' (Laughter.) 'Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?' [...]The photographs do two things at the same time. They provide an exposé and they provide a cover up. They showed the world that these things were going on, but they point the finger at a very small group of people. They make you think it's these people who are the culprits. These are the people who are responsible for everything. That is a misdirection. It gives you a false picture.
"It is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, "Oh, my goodness, you didn't have a plan." That's nonsense! They know what they're doing, and they're doing a terrific job. And it's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things! They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen here."
-- Donald Rumsfeld, April 11, 2003
I have only minutes ago discovered a collection of paintings by Fernando Botero that recreate the images of Abu Ghraib with moving beauty. In golden tones, Reubenesque Arabian men suffer. They simply suffer. Whatever else they may have done, they now suffer. So human, so in pain. Suffering so unjustly.
A sample.
Interesting painting by Fernando Botero. As to the suffering unjustly, isn't it the "whatever else" for which the person suffers? On a grander scale, and I hope not too off topic, is the torture of any grown man unjust, given his personal history's viciousness? Whether accounted slander by slander, or for the one man he laid his hands on?
Why can we see the Abu-Ghraib images thousands of times yet the media embargos the images of 9/11 because they're judged "too traumatic" for the American public?
When is "brave" Hollywood, so quick to make endless product about American, Christian and Catholic evils, ever going to make a film showing the evils of Islamic terrorism and fanaticism?
While we're trying to understand why the Muslim terrorists hate us, maybe we should sit down with such evils groups as the KKK and the Aryan Nation to understand why they hate minorities, Jews and Catholics so much.
We could also stop the rampant imperialism. Let other nations run themselves as long as they don't affect us or our allies. Just a suggestion.
Jim,
I don't disagree with your main points, and I'm looking forward to seeing S.O.P. (although "looking forward" might not be the best term for it--the film looks harrowing).
But I do have to take issue with your description of the people murdered in the September 11 attacks as "almost incidental." If the terrorists had wanted to limit the loss of life, they could have struck the buildings earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon, before or after work hours, as numerous terrorist groups have in the past. Even hitting the towers at lunchtime would likely have decreased the death toll drastically. You say that "far deadlier attacks were possible" but, given the weapons at their disposal (airplanes repurposed as missiles), I'm not sure that is true--where else would you find several thousand people in such proximity?
Now, maybe destroying the buildings while they were full was "about...the pictures"--perhaps the terrorists thought they'd put together a more compelling tableaux if there were Americans leaping to their deaths from the burning buildings. People aren't always repulsed by images of brutality, death, and suffering. Remember the images of the crowd dragging the naked corpses of U.S. soldiers in Somalia? Sometimes the images that cheer the disaffected most are the ones that are the most graphic. In that case, we can hardly fault the U.S. media for failing to provide America's enemies a more complete snuff film.
Gee, Scott, you sound just like Senator Inhofe. So Christian in your depth of compassion for other human beings. And considering the amount of times eyes glimpsed the horrific images of 9/11 on 9/11, you have only been successful in making yourself come off as a simpleton. And a callous one, at that. Great post, Jim.
One of the most interesting things Morris brings up on his website is the famous picture with the moved canon balls. There is a way to check temporality, but not meaning/purpose. Why the canon balls were moved will always be a mystery. Maybe these things aren't as nefarious as we think...or maybe they are more.
Mike: It's telling that people who claim to be "compassionate" and championing diversity of thought choose to make bigoted personal attacks (without knowing my beliefs) while not addressing what I wrote.
The left complains it can't question the war or the government (which it does frequently without censorship or punishment). I question the actions of the left and it responds with an attack and an attempt to marginalize by calling me an ignorant racist.
If there is a clear example of one being a simpleton and a bigot, it is you. It also displays the shallow, intolerance of too many on the left.
Fantastic post! Anyway, I agree with what you say about the attack of 9/11 being more about the spectacle (I hate to use that word, but it applies) than the actual amount of human lives lost. For those of us living in or around Manhattan, the images of those towers burning and the entire New York skyline covered in smoke are burned into our psyche. As an eighth grader at the time, I can say with complete certainty that it changed my life in a very profound way, seeing my home as a war zone. It opened my eyes to what people on the other side of the world experienced on a daily basis, and we were unfortunate enough to experience that for a few short hours of one day. A microcosm of our history, at best, but it has taken on so much meaning to all of us that remember it.
But the loss of life was far from inconsequential. As someone above said, they could have reduced loss of life if spectacle is their goal. They struck just as people were beginning to flood into those buildings, and if the planes had struck about an hour later the death toll would have been even more unbearable. No, their intent was to bring home the destruction we and our allies have brought to them. For those of us that were listening, the message was sent home loud and clear. I certainly understand why that composer equated the attack with 'art', though that attaches more grandiose nobility to the act than I think the terrorists had rationalized. It was a disgusting act of moral relativism on their end.
But the spectacle indeed was the most important element of the attack, they could have struck nuclear reactors with those planes just as easily. No, tearing down dual symbols of American capitalism was paramount to them. They must have jumped for joy when those buildings came down.
ScottBTampa, I agree with you. Hollywood loves to bash the US senseless over their worngs but remain chillingly silent on the evils of Muslim extremists or,a s they put it, freedom fighters. Why don't they release the images of splattered bodies of the people who had to jump from the WTC ion 9/11 to see the true evils inflicted by Muslim extremists. I want to see a film set in Iraq where Muslim extremists put explosives on mentally-challenged 12 year-olds, force them into a car and then blow the car up by remote control in front of food markets in Baghdad. I doubt Hollywood would ever make that film. Yes, the events at Abu Graib are deplorable but what Muslim extremists have done around the world is so so much more evil and unforgiveable.
I disagree with your view that the deaths in 9/11 were incidental. The terrorists knew what they were doing. They wanted to cause the most deaths possible so that is why they flew them in just before 9am when most of the people are working. if they wanted to do it for symbolism, they could have crashed the planes at midnight when hardly anyone would be in the building. Islamic terrorists want to cause as bug a crange as possible, hence, why they target Baghdad markets for their suicide missions. I am sick and tired of these apologist for Islamic terrorists who some even call freedom fighters. With this thinking so prevalent around the world, the Islamic terrorist must be laughing at how easy it is to manipulate western minds to agree with them.
JE: Of course death on a grand scale was essential to the planned spectacle -- and hitting in the morning, in daylight, made sure as many cameras as possible would capture and spread the event. That's essential to putting the "terror" in "terrorism." But if the planes had hit even an hour later, when more people were at work, the casualties would have been significantly greater.
There is a reason that American filmmakers focus on the actions of the American government more than the actions of Muslim extremists: because they are Americans. They understand that the way foreign governments treat their citizens, however inhumane, is not their problem to solve. How would you solve the problem? You'd send in an invasion army to displace the government and impose a new system of rule. But the situation was actually more complex than you thought, and now you've made a bunch of new enemies in the world. Now even your allies are angry with you. This is why you let sleeping dogs lie. And yes, they are sleeping dogs. As long as they are not attacking you or your allies, they are sleeping dogs. You do not get involved militarily in their situations because they are more complex than you realize and you will just end up screwing things up.
But the American citizens should definitely be concerned about what their government does. We are subject to its actions. When it decides to mess around in the Middle East with things that aren't its business, terrorists get fuel on their fire and single us out as the Great Satan, and they attack us with terrorism. And for that they are completely in the wrong, but we're also wrong in a lot of ways. When they attack us, we go to war. Of course we go to war. Going to war after 9/11 was the most obvious thing in the world. We cannot change the policies of foreign governments. But we can change the policies of our own government if we work skillfully enough. We can persuade our people to demand change.
By the way, the claim about liberals calling the terrorists "freedom fighters" is bogus.
And really, are you gonna tell people anything they don't already know by showing atrocities in Muslim countries? The news does enough of that already. If you made a movie about that, nobody would want to see it. Even you wouldn't want to see it. Because you've heard it all before.
And as for the Abu-Ghraib photos being ok to view but those of splattered Americans being "too traumatic," I think it's strange that you call this a left-wing thing. I see it as more of a right-wing thing: the idea that dead Americans are more sacred than dead foreigners and that images of the former should upset us more.
If the constant showing of images just reinforcing what is already knowsis the issue, what is the purpose of showing more images of "evil" American soldiers and the American people?
The left already shows that it believes our military is the source of evil.
I believe there was a move to not show images of 9/11 because it will remind Americans there is evil in the world and it may actually remind people that the enemy, currently, is Islamic terrorism.
I promise you, if Catholics or Evangelical Christians were flying jets into buildings and strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up pizza parlors and discos, we'd see many movies, documentaries and images of such carnage. And we should.
I believe --- and I thought my liberal friends believed --- that those who oppressed minorities, women and censored art were not to be tolerated.
I don't believe we should be the world's policeman or force democracy on people.
I hate war and I don't anyone who loves war.
However to believe if one stays silent and hopefully the bully won't pick on you is a dangerous policy.
One shouldn't wait to be attacked if one can avoid it.
And should we not get involved in such places as
as Darfur, which many celebrities (correctly) take on as a cause?
How do we solve those problems? Sending money? Food?
That's great if it gets there. But how do those like Clooney and Kristof in the Times want to solve such problems without use of force against those who brutalize their people?
First off, the thing is that these are persuasive documentaries. The makers are trying to persuade citizens to pressure their governments into changing. If you were to make a persuasive documentary about Islamic terrorists being an enemy, what would be the point? Are you trying to persuade people that Islamic terrorists do great harm to hundreds of innocent people? They already know that!
Second, if you look, the documentarians only talk about soldiers being "evil" if they personally have done something reprehensible. Usually their villains are high-ranking officers and government officials, while the soldiers are confused pawns in a confused game. As for the evil American people, I'm not sure what documentaries you've been watching.
The left believes that our military is the source of evil? That sounds like sloganeering to me.
Maybe we stopped showing images of 9/11 because it became old news. It's been 6 1/2 years after all.
As for oppression of minorities and women and censorship of art, if American citizens are not involved, it's out of our hands. If we took action, how could it not be policing the world? There are of course exceptions. If the oppressed citizens want refuge, we should let them in. But we shouldn't just get involved in the affairs of other countries whenever we see fit.
As for the bully, he's playing his own war games that have nothing to do with us. If he attacks us or our allies, then of course we act. But if we take it upon ourselves to simply jump in, we inevitably fail to grasp the complexity of the involved issues, and we make new enemies. This is why people attack us in the first place.
In general, the left, Democrats and many in the media have a, to be polite, uneasy relationship with things military.
While stating it supports the troops, the left (not all but too many) attacks the military.
On one hand, the left often mocks or attacks military ideals and values, depicts soldiers as bloodthirsty killers and rapists.
On the other hand, when it serves a political purpose (which is behind most of these films) the deaths of, and injury to, soldiers is used as exploitation to make political points.
As far as the 9/11 images being old --- why do we see images of slavery, lynchings, racist attacks of black marchers, the Holocaust victims?
They're centuries old in some cases, yet the evil captured in them is fresh. And the images are used to buttress a story.
So why should the media (again, some, not all) not show 9/11 images because it is deemed too traumatic? Since it is more than six years ago since 9/11 occurred, shouldn't the photos' effect be reduced?
As far as the Islamic terrorists: it seems Christianity and Catholicism are always targets. These religions can be mocked, insulted and attacked in films and in the media. That is part of a free society and while I may not like the messages, I never want to silence them or ban them.
However, I've yet to see anyone making a "Dogma" type film taking on Islam. What about an art exhibit showing an Islamic religious icon defiled?
One says "everybody knows" Islamic terrorism is evil and dangerous. "Everybody knows" Saddam was a horrible man and murdered and tortured his own people.
Everybody doesn't seem to know. Some call the war on terror a bumper sticker slogan.
Well images are important. We need to be reminded there is evil in the world. We need to see images of slavery, the Holocaust.
And we need to see that there is a large and dangerous group of Islamic extremists at war with those who do not believe as they.
Many say it's our fault.
Many believe if we're just nicer, just get down on our knees and ask why do you hate us that those possessed by hate will put down their weapons.
They won't.
And I don't believe we should wait until we're attacked until we act.
Who tells the families of those lost in such an attack that it could have been stopped, however we didn't to take any proactive measures which would anger the terrorists?
The tolerance of Islamic hatred is a form of patronizing, liberal guilt --- a dangerous bigotry --- in which one evil is excused and accepted.
I believe the so-called enlightened and progressive among us believe they will be spared by Muslim terrorists should they ever have to face such evil.
These people, afterall, are tolerant, against violence and bloodshed.
I believe such bigotry keeps those who would never stand for such intolerance of thought, believe, artistic expression in this country from having to confront such hatred
The Islamic murderers are not just against the U.S. They've attacked countries and murdered innocents around the world.
I don't want the U.S. to attack without provocation or without just cause.
My dream if for all those who are truly against violence, war and murder to stand and march against the Islamic terrorists.
I know the majority of Muslims are not violent.
Maybe the images of Muslims murdered by other Muslims and people executed for being gay or of not being Islamic will trigger a non-violent rise that will change this world.