visualizing war – Page 21 – NO CAPTION NEEDED

Back to the Future

August 28, 2007June 20, 2012
Lucaites
visual memory visualizing war
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A few weeks ago I called attention to how the attempt to institutionalize the “rule of law” in Iraq was encoded in practices and narratives reminiscent of the conquest of the American frontier. The trope of the conquest of the American west, complete with its allusions of manifest destiny, has been used with both sledge hammer subtlety and various degrees of finespun nicety since virtually the very beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The theme is eloquently and poignantly inflected in this image from Nina Berman’s 2004 “Purple Hearts” art exhibit, which was recently reprised in the NYT. “Purple Hearts” is a book/exhibit/DVD that includes pictures and interviews with six American veterans who were seriously injured in Iraq. This photograph is of Pfc. Adam Zaremba, a 20 year old “wounded in Baghdad when a mine blew off his leg.” The matter of fact objectivity of the caption reads like the conventional title in a family photo album – “Uncle Joe fishing at Lake Erie, 1923” or “Sally, 7, sits on Santa’s lap, Xmas 1952”—and contrasts with the evocative content being shown. The only thing missing, of course, is the date, which marks the scene as timeless. The formal minimalism of the caption contrasts as well with the intricacies and artistry of the image, the effect being to magnify the everyday relationship between the simple and the complex.

What we are looking at is a little hard to say—a fact that belies the unsayability of the picture. The image thus calls our attention to the capacity of the visual to help us see things that can’t be put into words, or can’t be verbalized with ease or efficiency. Indeed, a large part of the power of the image is in how it layers multiple transcriptions of meaning upon one another so as to complicate both the relationship between viewer and viewed, as well as the relationship between past, present, and future. The first thing to note is that Zaremba appears to be sitting in front of a television screen, and what we see is not his unmediated image, but rather his reflection in the monitor. The reflection reverses his orientation so that the viewer of the photograph loses the sense that Zaremba is watching the screen and, instead, is literally part of the scene being enacted, albeit looking away from the chaos behind him and past us to what we can only imagine is a future anterior moment. Though we know he is only a spectator here (and given his injury he can only be a spectator), nevertheless he is implicated in the action being projected outward. The difference between spectator and actor is thus elided, and so just as Zaremba as viewer is implicated in what is happening on the television screen as an active agent, so too are we as viewers implicated in the action, albeit once removed.

The scene seems to be part of a fairly traditional chapter from the received narrative of America’s manifest destiny. Modern progress, marked by the locomotive on the right hand side, required a transformation of the landscape, which threatened the indigenous and native cultures. Rather than to embrace the modern world, native Americans fought back, often in terrorist raids, and had to be controlled and eventually contained by the military and various and sundry mercenaries. Many good Americans sacrificed their lives to the cause, but as the saying went, they “died with their boots on.” Zaremba fights in a modern war where injuries are in some ways more horrifying than death (and so, ironically, he lives without legs), but there is more than a simple analogue to the war in Iraq operating here as the image functions in a more complex, allegorical register. Notice how the received narrative is complicated by the ghostlike apparition of native Americans flying through the air, a haunting of the image that simply won’t go away, even after a century of freedom and progress. And in this context, note too that Zaremba’s image is only slightly less spectral than the native Americans, projected equally backwards into the past and forwards to the future in what appears to be an almost straight line.

Walter Benjamin once wrote that “every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.” But according to this image it may well be George Santyana who has the final word when he reminds us that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The emotionless and stone cold look on Zaremba’s face implies a zombie-like existence as he glares beyond the present to an eternity that will be “irretrievably” haunted by the specter of our involvement in Iraq, just as we have been haunted by the specter of Vietnam, and before that the Trail of Tears, all wars fought in the names of “progress” and “freedom.” The overall effect is thus one of looking “back to the future”—or perhaps more accurately, looking forward to the past.

Photo Credit: Nina Berman

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A House of Cards

Much is made of how the mainstream media, and especially the “paper of record” underwrites a status quo mentality that often seems to play into, if not outright endorse, administration politics. There are good reasons for this, to be sure, and we have done our fair share here at No Caption Needed and over at The Bag of criticizing the ways in which photojournalism too often contributes to the normalization of such politics. What we must not forget, however, is that photojournalism is a complex and often eloquent public art, a technology of ingenium that functions in a wide range of ways to display and animate public life.

Earlier this week the NYT published a photograph that demonstrates how photojournalistic efforts can begin to frame a critical civic attitude, even as it adheres to the conventions of realist representation that might otherwise support a status quo sensibility and the current administration’s point of view. On 8/19/07 the NYT posted a picture of a single marine walking down a street in Falluja as part of a story concerning the “fragile calm” that has descended upon the city as a result of U.S. military presence there.

The street seems to be a main public thoroughfare, but there is no evidence of a public. Besides the lone marine in the foreground and what appears to be another marine in the distant background, almost too small to see, there are no other people and quite clearly no Iraqis. The only vehicles bear military camouflage, certainly no small consideration given the significance of car bombs, but also a reminder of the citywide vehicle ban imposed by the mayor and enforced by the U.S. military presence. Interestingly, however, it is not the marine who captures our immediate attention. Rather, it is the rusted and dirty propane tanks that literally divide and dominate the scene. Stacked high and teetering, like a house of cards, they seem somewhat out of place. The top yellow tank is especially strange, drawing our attention to the midline of the image and underscoring that this is where the narrative action of the scene resides. The caption makes the point, “Many wonder what will happen when they [the marines] leave,” while the image seems to imply that it is the very presence of the U.S. military that guards and helps to sustain the peace.

But a second look at the photograph invites a more critical attitude. The marine walks cautiously but with his rifle pointed down in a manner that suggests that he does not think he is in eminent danger, evidence of at least a modicum of peace and calm, though the situation can’t be all that safe or he wouldn’t be carrying his rifle in front of him (or, for that matter, he wouldn’t be wearing body armor). Indeed, his somewhat tentative posture implies a calm “before the storm” rather than the “peaceful” and self-sustaining calm we might associate with something like, say, meditation. The photograph thus invites a certain cynicism about the very premise of a fragile calm, which here seems to be more feigned than real—indeed, the empty streets are somewhat eerie, more evocative of a ghost town than a city in which peace reigns. Additionally, notice that the marine, the sign of American power, walks in a shadow, partially veiled by the darkness, an ominous sign of death and otherness. By contrast, the propane tanks, containers for fuel and thus the necessary power to make the city work, stand prominently in the light of day. As tall as the marine (and by implication as potentially powerful as he, though presumably empty), they are also clearly unstable. They command the viewer’s attention, although apparently not that of the marine, as he seems oblivious of either their presence or their precarious posture.

There are, I believe, two different ways to read this last dimension of the photograph: Either the marine simply doesn’t see the problem, ignorant of the true instability of local power and politics, or he chooses not to see it because he believes that there is nothing – absolutely nothing – he can do to prop up local power in the long run. Understood in this way, the photograph is an elegant and eloquent metaphor for the situation in Iraq, showing what might otherwise be hard to say: ignorance or resignation, it really doesn’t matter because, in the end, the task is very much like sustaining a house of cards, fated to failure. The photograph thus coaches a critique of the very premise of a “fragile calm” that informs the accompanying article – and by implication the administration’s subsequent appeal for continued patience and support – as anything other than hubris bolstered by dictatorial control.

Photo Credit: Marko Georgiev/New York Times

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Why Can't the War in Iraq Be a Disaster?

The news of the past week has included disaster coverage of the earthquake in Peru. A level 8 quake, it was a bad, killing at least 500 people and rendering thousands homeless. This photo is typical of the coverage:

We see survivors contending with shattered housing. Whether to undertake extensive repairs or rebuild from scratch obviously is a real question. Equally evident is the relative calm. People are dealing the the aftermath, but the quake is over. A cinder block will fall here and there and the area will remain somewhat dangerous during the clean-up, but people can get to work and help one another like the two guys in the picture, as everything is settling into place.

The news coverage already reflects (models) this thoroughly pragmatic state of affairs. We hear of governments, international aid organizations, churches, and other volunteers swinging into action. Public discussion begins about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of early warning systems, architectural designs, first responders, and other matters of public safety and infrastructure administration. The press also provides stories and images of solidarity: people praying together, impromptu vigils, neighbors assisting neighbors. These are good stories, even if we all know the drill. The stories have consequences: many readers will open their pockets, local governments will review disaster response plans, social networks will expand, and for a while lesser quake victims will receive news coverage and the benefits thereof that they would otherwise have missed.

One can still find much to fault, of course, but the whole business is at bottom a testament to the public value of news coverage and the organizational effectiveness that it nurtures. It also is an example of the power of framing. Look at this photograph:

This, too, could be a photo of the aftermath of an earthquake. Instead, it’s a Baghdad marketplace following a bombing. This one killed 170 and injured over 300, according to the first count. The week of the Peruvian earthquake saw blasts that killed 500+ Yazidis in two villages year the Syrian border. Since the invasion of March 19, 2003, at least 300 Iraqis have been killed by warfare every week, week after week, for a total thus far of at least 70,000. Think of it: an earthquake a week, every week for four years.

I can’t help but wonder what might change were enough people to label the situation in Iraq a disaster. Of course, it is a war–in fact, several wars all mixed up together. But here the war frame can only lead to more war. And for all the expressions of sympathy for those being destroyed, the response to Iraq at all levels has virtually none of the pragmatism and cooperation characterizing disaster relief. This difference in attitude is reflected in the two photographs above: in one, the viewer is at street level, close to the scene, postitioned as if to lend a hand; in the other, we are looking down as if “seeing like a state,” emotionally distanced from a mass of people being channeled through the “collateral damage” of history. One frame pulls us into the picture, and the other provides the secure perspective of geopolitical observation.

One can’t wish away the problems in Iraq by changing a label any more than one can fix it by waving a magic wand. And yet it is looking unlikely that the US will extricate itself any time soon, while our military presence there will continue to be a major cause of the carnage. This is in fact a disaster in more ways than one, and perhaps it is time to say so and, more important, to act as if it were so.

Photographs by AFP/BBC and Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press.

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The Conquering Hero

“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-VICTORIOUS.” – Vince Lombardi

I don’t usually follow football, but I do live in the Indianapolis area and like most Hoosiers I was caught up in all of the hoopla leading to last year’s Super Bowl victory. Even still, I probably would not have given this photograph so much as a second look, let alone a second thought, had it shown up in the Indianapolis Star or one of the smaller suburban newspapers. After all, Peyton Manning is a hometown hero and regularly celebrated by the local media. But where I came across it was in the New York Times “Pictures of the Day” slide show for August 17th, nestled in with photographs of the tragic (the Peruvian earthquake, the Utah mine disaster), the mundane (a long time congressional leader announcing his retirement, political and religious celebrations), and the silly (the Dutch Office Chair Racing Championship).

What makes this photograph notable is how truly ordinary it is: a revered sports figure attending to his doting fans. Even the irony of “real” warriors seeking the attention of a professional “weekend” warrior seems to slip past our notice with a wink and a nod, as just another day at the office. As the caption reads, “Taking a break from preseason workouts, Peyton Manning, quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, signed autographs for members of the 181st Tactical Fighter Wing visiting training camp in Terre Haute, Indiana.” And therein lies the problem, for these are most definitely not normal times. Like it or not, we are entrenched in a foreign war that over a period of four years has taken the lives of 3,700 U.S. troops and at least 50,000 Iraqis. And yet here we have a “picture of the day” in the “paper of record” that shows absolutely nothing out of the ordinary—for civilians and the military alike. Indeed, in an array of fourteen photographs of “the day,” this is the only one to portray the U.S. military in any fashion whatsoever.

The image of Peyton Manning signing autographs for members of the 181st Tactical Fighter Wing is telling in this regard. The faces of the autograph seekers are turned from the camera or obscured from view, their identities reduced to the anonymity of the uniform they share and the souvenirs that they carry; the only identifiable visage belongs to the successful warrior (“winning, is” after all “the only thing”), girded for battle. Manning towers over his suitors like a Titan. They seem to approach him tentatively, respectfully; they are thus subordinate not only in stature, but in attitude and gesture (as is due the “conquering hero”). Winning the Super Bowl is no small thing, to be sure, and obeisance to sport celebrities is a regular feature of late modern consumerist culture, but when military figures are visualized as supplicants to a civilian athlete during a time of war, our eyebrows should raise just a bit.

But focusing too much on how the photograph normalizes the current situation in Iraq risks looking past a separate, albeit related, concern. For the image also visualizes—and in the process normalizes—conventional beliefs and attitudes about the constitutive identity between the military and contemporary sport culture. The above quotation from Vince Lombardi is posted at a website for Sandhurst, the U.S. Military Academy Prep School. And like the photograph, it is altogether routine, a comparison that not only recalls the romantic mythos of battle and warfare of a bygone era, but is part and parcel of our contemporary vocabulary for talking about sports: a season is a “campaign”; coaches, quarterbacks, and point guards are “generals”; contests are won or lost “in the trenches”; the field of play is a “war zone”; and on and on. And then too there is this: Since July 2005 the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marines have spent a combined total of 12.5 million dollars in sports related television recruitment advertising aimed at the 17-24 demographic, with the vast majority of it going to ESPN.

Hail Caesar.

Photo Credit: Michael Conroy/Associated Press

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"For Now We See As Through A Glass Darkly"

The photograph has a haunting quality about it. At first glance it is hard to know what one is looking at. Attention is probably drawn initially to the three holes in the right side of the upper left quadrant that create something of a triangle and the menacing specter of a predatory face – a wolf perhaps – staring back at the viewer. Eventually, one’s eyes drift to the midpoint and notice the dark shadow which upon scrutiny turns out to be the image of a human face, possibly a woman though it is hard to tell; her expression, fractured and obscured by what we finally recognize as bullet-riddled glass, appears simultaneously cautious and curious. The question is, what does she see?

The caption provides the facts: “Iraqi women [yes, two women, at closer examination you can see the second shadow on the left side of the image] look through a bullet-riddled windshield after an overnight raid by U.S. troops in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 12, 2007. Police and residents said U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by helicopters raided the east Baghdad neighborhood on early Sunday killing two people and wounding four others. The U.S. military said it was looking into the report.” The story to which the photograph is attached, as if an illustration, is a report that four U.S. soldiers were killed when a sniper shot one and then lured the others into a house rigged with a bomb.

The facts, it turns out, tell us very little. Even after careful study they prove to be no more than tidbits of data that confirm the obvious – women looking at a bullet-riddled window – and leave all else open to conjecture? But what do these women see? A world torn apart no doubt. But by whom? And why? Liberators protecting their world from an indigenous repressive regime? Or an occupying force guided by its own imperial designs? The picture doesn’t say, and the story only confuses the matter, but as the caption notes, the U.S. military is “looking” into it. Of course, what these women actually see or don’t see is only half of the problem – and perhaps the least of it.

The other half of the problem is that we don’t quite know what we see either. The photograph positions the viewer inside the vehicle looking out through the windshield. Windshields are contrivances of the modern world. One does not typically find them in the coaches, buggys, and surreys of an earlier century. They are transparent walls that segregate and insulate those on the inside from the outside world. Indeed, they are, in their fashion, modern veils produced by an advanced technological society, shielding those on the inside from the gaze of outside “others” (as external backlighting often obscures and distorts the vision of those who would peer in), even as they enable a certain scopic sovereignty to those on the inside to see the world around them. In this picture the windshield seems to separate the modern world from a foreign and archaic other. But here, of course, the protective layer afforded by technological superiority has been breached, the scopic regime fractured and distorted by another modern technology. No longer insulated from the elements and protected from the outside world, we see as “through a glass darkly,” a mirror that reflects back at us a vision of our own rapacious impulses.

But not to worry, for the military is looking into it.

Photo Credit: Karim Kadim/AP Photo

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"It's the least the American People can do …"

August 9, 2007
Lucaites
boots and hands the visual public visual memory visualizing war
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Earlier this week former Secretary of Defense Colin Powell visited Walter Reed Hospital and presented Purple Hearts to two soldiers wounded in Iraq. The formal occasion for the ceremony was inauspicious: the third reissue of a U.S. postage stamp honoring the Purple Heart on the 75th Anniversary of its having been initiated by the War Department (even though the order establishing it was signed in February 1932, not August). In presenting the awards, Powell, himself a Purple Heart recipient, noted, “It’s the least the American people can do to recognize those of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who have been willing to step forward to serve the nation …” As I read these words I was reminded of an episode of the TV show M*A*S*H in which Hawkeye Pierce responded to a similar comment with the retort “… and never let it be said that we didn’t do the very least that we could do.”

Even a minor occasion for a photo-op requires photographs and this event was no exception (after all, August is a slow news month). The AP posted 8 photographs. Two featured Powell by himself, one featured Powell and the Postmaster General unveiling the new stamp, and there were five photographs that featured the Purple Heart and the presentation ceremony. Of these later five, all by the same photographer, three are particularly interesting.

The first photograph of the set, shown above, is the one that seems to be most frequently reproduced in newspapers and on websites. It is a thoroughly conventional representation of an awards ceremony. We’ve seen it before in pictures from the county fair, or the local Rotary Club, and so on. Here the former Secretary is pinning the medal on Army PFC Marcus LaBadie while his mother proudly (if somewhat uncomfortably ) looks on. The image is shot from a slight, low angle, and from off to the side. The effect is to distance the viewer from the scene as spectator, and thus to allay emotional identification; the more important point is that there is no evidence of injury. There has to have been one, of course, otherwise there would be no award, but the clear message here is that once hurt, LaBadie is now whole again.

Contrast this with an image that, as far as I can tell, has not been reproduced anywhere but at the AP website. This photograph seems to be a somewhat sardonic comment on Powell’s claim that the American people are in fact doing the least that they can do:

Here we have Pvt. LaBadie’s wheel chair with a framed reproduction of the postage stamp commemorating the Purple Heart resting where he should be. Following the conventions of realist photography, it is shot straight on and in fairly close range, encouraging the viewer’s direct involvement, and thus increasing the likelihood of emotional identification with the scene. The wheel chair is a harsh reminder that LaBadie is not as well as he looks in the previous photo as, apparently, he still needs help getting around; but of course all of that has to be inferred as the hurt body itself has vanished. The framed commemorative stamp physically takes his place – and our attention – and is thus a reminder that the occasion has more to do with a political spectacle than the honoring of a particular soldier’s sacrifice. Or perhaps it is a signal that contrived photo ops such as this actually damage the award itself, putting it in need of rehabilitation and care. In any case, the placement of the picture frame is a clear indication that the presentation of such awards, however honorable and deserved, is a poor substitute for giving soldiers what they need in order to heal and become whole. It is an image of “the least the American people can do” with the clear implication that much more is needed.

In the third photograph the body returns.

On the left is Powell’s healthy hand, the prosthesis on the right belongs to Army Sgt. Robert Evans. Again, it is not a photograph that has been reproduced all that much, though it did appear in the Bloomington Herald-Times (8/8/07, C8) in conjunction with a story on the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in the first week of August. Like the photograph of the wheelchair, it is shot straight on, though here the cropping is tight and in a manner that forces the viewer’s attention to focus on what she or he might prefer otherwise to ignore. If you “really” pay attention, the image suggests, here is what you get: Aging men (notice the wrinkles on the hand) in suits dictating what men in uniform do. And the result is palpable. The Purple Heart can help in the process of healing, perhaps, but it must sit in the shadows and in the background; it should never – because it can never – replace what was lost.

This last image is, in some measure, a poignant synthesis of the first two pictures. It moves beyond the somewhat antiseptic vision of the first, but it lacks (or rather softens) the biting cynicism of the second. It is a powerful and searing emblem of the real costs of war and who pays the price; but it is also a reminder that even as we need to do more than the “least [we] can do,” sometimes doing even as much as we can may never be enough.

Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak/AP

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Mourning in America, II

Last week I commented that the war in Iraq is being fought in the shadow of dueling memories of WW II and Vietnam by a very different generation of individuals/citizen-soldiers, and I suggested that one consequence might be the need for unique modes of public memoria. I don’t know how I missed it until now, but such an effort has been underway on the west coast in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Oceanside, and other locations. Created anew every Sunday by Veterans for Peace, “Arlington West” is a “temporary cemetery” of 3,000 crosses placed in perfect rows, eighteen inches apart, on a beach facing a flag draped coffin. Mourners write the names of the deceased on slips of paper and place them on individual crosses, giving them a personal identity. A poster that lists all of the American military personnel who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war is also on display.

The comparison to Arlington National Cemetery is obvious, but it is the differences between the two that are pronounced. Arlington National Cemetery is a permanent installation administered by the Department of the Army and governed by a strict code of regulations, including restrictions on demonstrations of protest or dissent. One needs a pass to enter the grounds. Arlington West (which began in Santa Barbara in November 2003) is a temporary installation that is recreated each and every week by private citizens—veterans and volunteers alike. The sustained dedication and effort to produce the installation week after week is almost beyond imagination. There are no formal regulations governing its operation, and when opposition to the project emerges, as it has from time to time, it is engaged in a democratic spirit. No one needs a pass to enter. And there is one more significant difference: unlike its east coast namesake, it rests on sand, not lush, green grass, an emblem, no doubt, of the distant battlefield on which the death and carnage being marked took place. Perhaps, within these discrepancies, we espy the invention of a unique and radically democratic mode of remembrance; egalitarian and pragmatic, it simultaneously invokes a pious reverence for the sacrifices of fallen comrades and a cynical contempt for the undemocratic ways in which the war that took their lives continues to be waged and prosecuted, both abroad and at home.

Photo Credit: Santa Monica Chapter of Veterans For Peace

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Paper Call: Video Game Reader

Joystick Soldiers: The military/war video game reader

Edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne

The editors seek essays on military/war-themed video games which explore the multifaceted cultural, social, and economic linkages between video games and the military. The collection will feature scholarly work from a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including: close textual readings of military-themed video games; critical histories of game production processes and marketing practices; and reception studies of video war gamers, fandom, and politically resistant game interventions. As there is no other collection of its kind, Joystick Soldiers will make a significant contribution to the breadth of work shaping the burgeoning field of game studies, complementing analyses concerning the Military-Entertainment Complex, and offering diverse insights on how modern warfare has been represented and remediated in contemporary video games. The editors invite junior as well as established scholars to submit, and welcome cross-disciplinary work from sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, history, military studies, psychology, economics, media studies, visual communication, graphic arts and game design, education, and so forth.

We are looking for submissions that address a wide range of topics from diverse methodological approaches, including but not limited to:

–Use of games for training, recruitment, propaganda (serious games)
–Video games and military ideology (or Military-Entertainment Complex)
–Representing / playing soldiers, terrorists, & civilians
–Global reception of America’s Army and other “pro-US” war games
–Production of war video games
–War video games across genres (e.g., FPS, RTS, RPG)
–Playing war video games of past & near-future conflicts
–War game mods and other user-generated content
–Machinima as social commentary on war (e.g., Red vs. Blue)
–Games and resistance (non-combat games, in-game protests, diplomacy as alternative to force)
–Game for peace
–Networked war games in different spaces (LAN parties, on-line, mobile).
–War games and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

We are interested in defining “military/war” video games widely, but not so widely as to be useless for critical analysis. The following is a partial list of war video games we hope to include, but submissions for scholarly work about other games are welcome, for example games based on past wars (Battlefield 1942; Call of Duty, etc) and non-US based games.

–Marine Doom
–Counter-Strike & its mods
–America’s Army & America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier
–Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
–Close Combat: First to Fight
–Conflict: Desert Storm II – Back to Baghdad
–FA-18 Operation Desert Storm
–Freedom Fighters
–Full Spectrum Warrior & Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
–Kuma War
–Ghost Recon 3: Advanced Warfighter
–Operation Flashpoint: Resistance
–Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
–Sniper Elite
–SOCOM
–Under Siege, Under Ash, and Special Force

Please submit a 500 word abstract and short bio (100 words max) by September 17, 2007 in Rich Text Format (RTF) to Nina Huntemann and Matthew Payne at joysticksoldiers@gmail.com. We expect final papers will not exceed 5000-7000 words and will be due December 10, 2007. Feel free to repost this CFP on relevant lists. Please contact us if you have questions about potential essays or the book project in general.

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Mourning in America

July 27, 2007
Lucaites
the visual public visual memory visualizing war
2 Comments

As of this posting there have been 3,013 U.S. military casualties in Iraq since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That is three thousand and thirteen indistinguishable, flag-draped coffins. Three thousand and thirteen individual bodies. And the question is, how should we honor and mourn their sacrifice, as individuals or as faceless members of a collectivity? The issue came to a head at Fort Lewis, Washington this past week, where the base commander considered doing away with the practice of individual services for each death in lieu of a collective monthly memorial. The rationale was logistical, if not a little bit ironic: there are just too many deaths coming out of the war to honor and remember each individual. The protest from soldier’s families and veterans was palpable and pronounced. The policy was subsequently revised to hold weekly memorials, a compromise which surely satisfies no one.

The photograph above was featured with the original New York Times story – although it was subordinated after a few hours and replaced on the mast with a picture of an honor guard performing a rifle salute – and then repeated the next day in a story reporting the compromise. And as poignant as it is, it nonetheless underscores a very real problem: this is not WWII, where an entire generation sacrificed and fought and died, and thus could be memorialized in the collective – “the greatest generation.” Nor is it Vietnam, where those who fought and died became the scapegoats for the nation’s sins and could only be memorialized after great public controversy, and at that by splitting the difference between the collective and individual trauma of the war in a monument that honored both at once, with names inscribed in black granite. Rather, it is a war being fought in the shadow of our dueling memories of WWII and Vietnam, by men and women who are individuals first and soldiers second (and only incidentally so). We have yet to come to terms with this difference, or the symbolic register in which it is being experienced and enacted, and yet, as this image hints, it is a difference that will no doubt animate a unique mode of memorium, one that in the end, perhaps, will need to put the individual face in front of the flag.

Photo Credits: Kevin P. Casey/New York Times

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Visual Memory and the Fall of Iraq

The cover of the current issue of Time provides a fine example of two features of the visual public sphere: allusions between images in different media, and the role of visual memory in shaping historical analogies. Here’s the cover:

This is a remarkable piece of graphic design. The most important feature, I believe, is the helicopter, which is a direct allusion to the fall of Saigon. That event is fused in collective memory with photographs of helicopters–they are omnipresent in the images and the discourse about the last hours of the evacuation. For example, Time‘s silhoutte is a reprise of this image:

There are few examples of this or similar images in the Google image archive, however, which is dominated by this photograph:

The photo was taken by Hubert Van Es; you can read his report on the shot here. There also were images of of the choppers being pushed off the decks of one or more aircraft carriers, but those are less available today. Helicopters became the visual marker of the fall, and any one image probably channels the others. I suspect that there are fewer still shots of the airborne machines online because those images were more likely to be on video. The one I used was taken from a BBC puff piece on Peter Arnett; the photo is captioned “Fall of Saigon, but Arnett stays.”

These photographic and video images shape collective memory in part because they have been relayed in the intervening years by graphic designers. So, for example:

and, probably the most widely circulated design, which could rely on the literal image to support a formal allusion:

Thus, the Time designer could count on the historical analogy because the visual design had become so thoroughly disseminated.

And the analogy has specific implications that are evident from other elements of the cover. For example, look at the text that is where the A had been in “IRAQ”: “What will happen when we leave.” It is not a question.

Time photo-illustration by Arthur Hochstein, July 30, 2007.

Update: To see how the Bush administration tries to counter the analogy, look at the July 26 post at BAGnewsNotes, which compares the Time cover with the latest photo op.

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