Monday, December 10, 2012

Extra, Extra ... the Spectacle Triumphs Again

This week debate continued on the fiscal cliff, Netanyahu announced more settlements in Palestine (which was just recognized by the United Nations), we continued to debate Susan Rice as a potential Secretary of State and a photographer for the New York Post published an image of a man seconds before he was hit by a subway (USA Today). The first obvious question is why he would take a picture instead of trying to save the man, Ki-Suck Han. The second is whether the Post should have published the image on the cover. 

Neither question is new. The Post has been criticized for years for their covers and sensationalizing of the news, as are most tabloids. The only thing that makes this exceptional is whether the press should show someone right before they die. If it is related to war or in some way brings something worthwhile to light for the public, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, the way the U.S. mainstream media tends to censor itself regarding the consequences of war is substantially more irresponsible than this image, to me (as for example respecting the Bush administration's ban on showing soldier coffins during the Iraq War). But it is troubling not only that the photographer would focus on the shot over the human being in front of him, but that the Post saw nothing wrong with making it the cover image. The other issue, of the photographer's responsibility, is more interesting. We obviously don't know the whole story and whether he would have been putting himself in peril by trying to rescue Han. But it is certainly troubling to think that he would first consider getting the shot. On the other hand, this is what photographers do, as any great one will tell you.

And the photographer is not the first to elicit condemnation for his inaction. There was the photographer in Columbia who took a picture of a young girl right before she died in freezing water. But in that case there was no way to save the girl and the image did help pressure the government to respond to the tragedy. More famously, was the British photographer who took the picture of the young African child crawling back to the refugee camp as a condor stood behind waiting to eat the emaciated body when he died. The photographer in that case won a Pulitzer, but later killed himself from the guilt of recognizing what he had done (or failed to do). In this case, the sensational nature of the inactivity seems equally troubling, at both the individual and social level.

It is really just the latest manifestation of the spectacle society, where the representation of reality stands in for that reality and we increasingly live in a mediated world of images that refocus the world in the capitalist/consumer culture mold. An event doesn't really happen until the media reports on it, a movie/tv reenactment is made or it is posted on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Events are packaged, framed for maximum effect and then sold to the public as if this were reality itself. And we increasingly seem to see the world through those lenses, unable to distinguish between the underlying reality and the representation of it in images, sounds and words. The controversy will soon dissipate (it sort of already has) and in its place will only be the image of a man moments before he dies. From a purely artistic or social science perspective, it is a compelling image that can give us insight into our greatest fear -- death itself. But at a broader social level, it shows the way the spectacle continues to reach into every aspect of our lives and, in my mind, reminds us of an underlying sociopathology that has imbued itself into the American soul.        

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