Tawny N post 11

Tawny Najjar

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.” – George Bernard Shaw

In America, the country is ruled by the government, but the government is ruled by the people and the ideas that they have. Throughout the semester, we have learned how images can have a lasting impact on the ideologies of the public, and on the way they view current events. The Nazis controlled what images were in used in the media and museums to support their cause and beliefs. Riefenstahl’s documentary was used as a form of Nazi propaganda, while art that went against the Nazi ideals was considered degenerate and unacceptable. Images were used by the government to progress and win support from the people. Plato believed that the power of the arts should be marshaled and used for the good of the state, to empower the state and lead it on a prosperous path, toward glory and unification rather than toward disharmony and conflict. The images’ power to depict reality or create a new one has had tremendous influence in society throughout the years. The current images of the war in Iraq, the “War on Terror,” have shown that power.

During wartime, numerous images are displayed in the media, depicting scenes that support the war, or depicting scenes that clearly berate it. In America, the government has attempted to display images that show the war in a positive light, images that speak of patriotism and protecting one’s country. They feed off people’s craving for nationalism and togetherness, offering images that appeal to those desires. Pictures with the American flag blowing in the wind, large numbers of troops marching in line, and aerial shots of buildings of power (the White House, the Pentagon, etc) are commonly used in magazines, newspapers, and television, inviting United States citizens to join in and support the cause. War is supposed to appear to be honorable and noble, an attack on the immorality and unjust ways of others.

The government supports the circulation of positive images, but discourages images that go against American beliefs. Images, if used for those purposes, can be viewed as too ideological and even harmful in certain circumstances. The United States government saw the Abu Ghraib photos as harmful and derogatory to the “war on terrorism” effort. Yes, the content of the photos does depict some American soldiers in a negative light, but even more disturbing is the fact that these photos were taken and passed from soldier to soldier, as if they were some kind of joke. These pictures, which completely degraded the prisoners in them, served no constructive purpose other than to be used as a form of torture, embarrassment, and more importantly, to provide humor. They were meant to be circulated and seen by numerous people; it was all in good fun. This thinking highlights one of the growing problems in America: from realistic video games to television and movies, the fantasies and practices of violence are seen as good entertainment, as fun (Sontag 4). Images have an impact on the viewer. They can represent a reality, or they can create a new one. In this age of technology, photos can be manipulated to depict whatever the photographer wants to present to the viewer. Unlike paintings or drawings, this manipulation can have a bigger impact on the viewer. Photos have the sense of reality, an element that is missing in brush strokes and pencil lines. Viewers react stronger to actual depictions of emotions, rather than emotions that are obviously drawn-on by the artist to fit the theme of the painting.

As Libby says in Culture/War, “images, as least realist ones, tend to be regarded as natural signs that passively provide visual records of what is recognizable in the image. This is especially true with photographs, which, even in this digital age, are commonly understood neutrally to represent the events as they occur” (Libby 43). Cameras are used on a daily basis to record everyday events. They are used as a recording system, a way for people to forever remember their precious moments. This has become so common that people do not think about the dangerous power that photos can have. If something seems valid enough and appeals to people’s emotions, most they will tend to accept it, even if it is far from the actual truth. There are so many ways to twist reality in a photograph: the lighting, camera angle, position of the subject, and additional props used in the scene. They can vividly convey emotions, taking advantage of the viewer’s sentiments. Photos have the capacity to have one meaning to one viewer, and a completely different meaning to another viewer. As Stuart Hall said, “representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture” (Libby 45).

The Abu Ghraib photos caused a great upheaval in America, but this anger was not necessarily caused by the actual content of the photos. Many were more upset that these photos were publicized for thousands of people to see. The publication of the photos caught the US government off-guard, and the President and his advisors immediately tried to dissociate themselves from the incidents. When asked about the torture pictures, President Bush said, “Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people…I didn’t like it one bit” (Wallis 2). He later gave a speech concerning the Abu Ghraib photos, saying that he was “sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families,” but then continued to say that he was “equally sorry that people seeing these pictures didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America” (Sontag 2). As Sontag later said, these images were “representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation together with the Bush administration’s distinctive policies” (Sontag 2). Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield testified that these photographs damaged “the reputation of the honorable men and women of the armed forces who are courageously and responsibly and professionally defending our freedom across the globe,” instigating that the government was more worried about the damage to its reputation, image, and success, rather than the actual events going on (Sontag 7). Rumsfield later said that the pictures never should have been published and banned the use of cameras by the U.S. military in Iraq (Wallis 2). This illustrates their belief that it was the “the media’s” fault, which was provoking further violence. However, Malcolm X was once quoted as saying, "You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face the reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

However, American investigate reporter Seymour Hersh saw the photos to be a way in which the illegal and immoral practices could be brought to light for public knowledge. By giving them this role, he placed all of the blame on the subjects in the photos, the soldiers inflicting the torture. In his opinion, the photos were neutral records of the occurrences (Libby 44). Contrary to this belief, photos do not merely play a neutral role in society. As Libby stated, “Images are not transparent screens through which the viewer can see some truth beyond, but constructed cultural objects whose intelligibility is made possible only within a larger matrix of other signifying practices and the social relations in which they are a part” (Libby 44). The reactions to the photos proved that they were not merely a form of neutral representation, but were instead a means meant to provoke and instigate some form of action. Many interpretations of the actions committed in the photos looked beyond the surface and revealed innate beliefs and attitudes about gender, race, and nation. W. J. T. Mitchell wrote, “If we want to understand the power of images, we need to look at their internal relations of domination and resistance, as well as their external relations with spectators and with the world” (Libby 45). These beliefs of dominance over the prisoners are clearly seen in photographs that depict naked prisoners being forced to commit sexual acts, prisoners cowering away from guard dogs, and most especially, the photograph that shows a hooded prisoner standing on a box with electrodes connected to his hands. "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious" (Oscar Wilde).

Both the content of the photos and the fact that they were exploited are reasons for concern. However, the most important issue of these photos is the thinking behind them. The prisoners were tortured, embarrassed, and degraded, while American soldiers posed next to them with smiles on their faces and hands forming the thumbs-up sign at the camera. From the looks of glee on their faces, these soldiers believed that they had done nothing wrong. It is this mindset that should be examined. America has prospered on ideals of patriotism and national unity. However, this mindset has lead to the idea that this country is superior to others. Sontag wrote, “Looking at these photographs, you ask yourself, ‘How can someone grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being?’…And you feel naïve for asking, since the answer is, self-evidently, people do these things to other people…Americans too have done them and do them when they are told, or made to feel, that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show” (Sontag 4). When asked why the soldiers took the photographs, Lynddie England replied, “We thought it looked funny, so pictures were taken” (Libby 47).

Despite these disturbing pictures and their implications, war images should not be kept from public view during wartime. The government has attempted to censor what pictures are available for mass viewing by putting emphasis on pictures that display ideas of patriotism, nationality, and unity. However, war is not always glorious and clean. Images that contain negative war scenes bring evidence of the documented events into the public sphere and call for action in response to the events they record (Libby 44). They invoke a desire to uncover the real truth, the real problem. When both positive and negative images of war are displayed, people are able to come to their own conclusions and develop their own views on the war. This was the original purpose of a democracy (Power Point). Butler stated, “The task at hand is to establish modes of public seeing and hearing that might well respond to the cry of the human within the sphere of appearances…We might consider this as one of the implications of war, because politics – and power – work in part through regulating what can appear, what can be heard” (Libby 48). The public needs to know what war is truly about. The negative images give them the opportunity to see the other side of the spectrum. As Stuart Hall said, “Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture” (Libby 45).

On the subject of the Abu Ghraib photos, though it was despicable that they were passed along as humorous material, they did alert the public to the idea that war is not clear-cut; during a war, the line between right and wrong, between black and white, is blurred and often crossed. These photos contradicted the “studied heroics of twentieth-century war photography that has been updated to the current conflict. Away from the photojournalistic flourishes designed to make war palatable – the heroic flag-raisings, the dogged foot soldiers close to the action, the sense of shared humanity among combatants, and the search for visual evidence that war is universal and inevitable – the often-banal JPEGs from Iraq proffer a very different picture; war is systematic cruelty enforced at the level of everyday torture” (Wallis 2). They opened people’s eyes to the reality that they were facing: people were suffering at the hands of American soldiers. This contradicted everything that the government has been telling the public. However, most importantly, the images forced the public to think about what they believed in, and made them choose for themselves what to support or be against. The pictures also showed the repercussions of ideas of dominance and superiority. Many of the photos were similar to American lynching photos. The soldiers in them looked very happy and pleased with themselves (Sontag 2). However, appreciation of the severity of one’s actions can prevent a repeat of those occurrences. When people see what effect the war and ideas of national superiority have on people, they can choose to either support or not support the continuation of the war. Moreover, the photos also forced the government to acknowledge that the war that America was waging was not pure and simple. As Sontag wrote, “It was the photographs that made all of this ‘real’ to Bush and his associates. Up to then, there had been only words, which are easier to cover up in our age of infinite digital self-reproduction and self-dissemination, and so much easier to forget” (Sontag 5).

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words; in this case, the pictures from Abu Ghraib made others say those words. The government could not hide behind their ideas of patriotism and “good versus evil” and had to instead acknowledge that war is not always positive and beneficial. The photos also displayed the power that images have on the public – on their actions, thoughts, and ideologies.