Okay, so the simple fact is that your NCN guys took the night off to watch the Super Bowl.  Why?  Maybe because one of us is from Indianapolis and wanted to root for the Colts … or maybe out of some primitive desire to remember what rock ‘n roll once was.  We could say we were disappointed on both counts, but not really.  The game was well played (despite the outcome), and even while Roger Daltry couldn’t hit all of his notes and watching an aging Peter Townsend prance about the stage was something of an embarrassment, the halftime show was nevertheless a reminder to us aging, academic baby boomers who too easily think of nostalgia as little more than an ideological problematic that … well … even we can be sucked in by its charms.

All of that aside, there is one other point to be made:  As Carrie Underwood completed her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner there was an (almost) perfectly timed military fly over and no one seemed to notice.  No one mentioned it on the CBS broadcast, the audience didn’t react, and I couldn’t even find a single photographs of it any of the slideshows that appeared on various U.S., national media websites following the game.  I’m not entirely sure what to make of that fact given how much hype as been given to the military presence at such events since 9/11, though my worry is that it is one more piece of evidence in support of the normalization of war thesis which suggests that we are altogether inured to the presence of the military in both our ritualized and everyday lives. Maybe that’s what accounts for this photograph that showed up at the Guardian (though nowhere else as far as I know):

And so the question has to be, “Whooooo are we … who, who … who, who …?”

Photo Credits:  Robert Carr/AP’ Charlie Riedel/AP

Credit:  Mike Lukovich

“Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

By guest correspondent Christopher Gilbert:

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”  —George Orwell

On December 1, 2009, President Obama deployed 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Neither of the soldiers above is one of them. Indeed, neither is real, but rather digital representations found in the new video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released late last year, one day before Veteran’s Day. I wonder if, when you looked at the picture above, you thought it was an actual picture taken from the battlefield, as did I.

War has long been the shadow cast on the backdrop of American life, a part of us, varying in degrees of prominence the brighter or darker it becomes, so it chilled me to read a review of this game titled, “Modern Warfare 2 Kills Well With Others.”  The implications of the title notwithstanding, the author of the review, Gus Mastrapa, reinforces an “us v. them” perversity, writing: “the game cribs its morality from post-Vietnam Hollywood: War is bad, except when it’s not. Soldiers who fight for freedom are good, except when they’re not.” At least he attempts to moralize the game. Yet a game itself has morals per se as much as war, capitalism, or even journalism, which is to say “not at all.” It is not the concept or pursuit or game that has the morality, but the human subjects who impel it,  create it, and  play it. And increasingly more individuals are playing these first-person shooter military simulations—whether for pleasure, recreation, catharsis, or even combat training—trying to “get a taste” of war. One commentator goes so far as to say that “[MW 2] makes you feel every ounce of [it]” as if “you are there, doing it all.” Not only is it violent and graphic, but “realistic,” capable of “building community,” while showing that “violence has a real cost.”

Modern Warfare 2 may be realistic, but it is absolutely not real. Indeed, as a genre video games are inherently detached from any obligation to represent reality. Despite the fact that digitized blood spatters across the screen when the gamer is shot, the game itself—and any violent game for that matter—is clean (as is much of our conception of real modern warfare, my own included). Thus, such virtual simulaitons can house the “perfect enemy,” since it is imaginary, and can be justified as such (especially against those who condemn it for its violence, realism, vulgarity, even pathology) insofar as it is “just a game.” Though it is graphic and realistic, it is merely a digital portrayal, a simulacrum—blips on a screen, pure fiction. As such, the only “real cost” that it incurs to the gamer is $59.99 paid to purchase it.  In real-life images, too, we can see but a glimpse of the “costs of war,” of its materiality. Consider below:

As numerous NCN posts have reminded us, we generally see relatively clean images of war. We also experience war from a distance. In the video game, the imagery is dirty (though you can “turn off the blood”), but the player is unsoiled. The images are close, but the horror is at a remove. Indeed, in an important sense the problem is not the video game per se, but that war/violence is not clean, and attempts to make it appear otherwise are inherently dissimulating.

The fact is that the video game player really loses nothing. At the end of the game, his or her violence is not real. He or she can simply turn off the device, feeling only satisfaction, disappointment, excitement, perturbation, or some other virtually induced emotion. The real soldier, however, stands to lose much, much more. You or I can play a video game or look at photographed soldiers, but we can never truly know the horror that is war. All the more reason that we renew and review our collective senses of community, of humanity, of war, while remembering what Kenneth Burke said: that getting along with each other—and not fighting, defaming, victimizing, or killing each other—is the essence of the good life.

Photo Credit: www.broadbandgenie.co.uk and Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Christopher Gilbert is a graduate student in rhetoric and public culture in the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University. You can contact him at cgilbie@gmail.com

There’s a fine video criticism of Avatar making the rounds, thanks in part to a boost from the Huffington Post.  The author is Jay Bauman at redlettermedia.com, and he absolutely nails an important point: “The Na’vi were a little too perfect and harmonious for a primitive culture, and the military were a little too simplistic and destructive for an advanced culture.”  He’s certainly right on the first point–and “little too” actually means “way too”–and he is correct on the second as well, once you distinguish between the destructive potential and the actual conduct of the U.S. military in the field, and remember that the distinction is meaningless to those who actually get nailed by modern firepower.

In other words, enough of the time the truth about modern warfare is complicated.  When the U.S. military has been successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is because they are both highly destructive and regularly engaged in careful interactions with ordinary people caught in the war zone.  Thus, the military has two faces.   Here’s one of them:

The caption for this photograph tells us that a Marine turret gunner is inside an armoured vehicle in the Pech Valley, Afghanistan.  OK, he’s a turret gunner, and he also is War incarnate.  The death’s head, his physical bulk poised for action even within an enclosed space, his uniform that seems like some infernal skin, and his effortless ease and conformity with the metal and machines all around him all communicate one thing: this guy is capable of wreaking total violence on anything that gets in his way.

I am not going to say that the photograph is misleading and that actually the gunner is there to hand out candy to kids.  This is one of the true faces of empire, and one that rightly terrifies those who see it.  But there also is another side of military action:

This photo was on the front page of the New York Times yesterday, and so one can easily read it as an attempt to help the U.S. put its best face forward.  It is as accurate and as representative as the one above, however.  Here the Marines are on a sweep through Helmand province, which has lead to this interaction between two individuals, each of whom is taking care to show that he is not as dangerous as he might be.  The photo positions the two men as roughly equals, and while it emphasizes the gulf between them, that space does not appear to be a battle space.  The gulf symbolized by the blank wall could include cultural differences, political objectives, or social trust, but in any case it seems clear that the work to be done has to involve communicating rather than firing the Marine’s weapon.  In fact, it becomes easy to see each of them in civilian terms, as if the one on the right were a local businessman (which he may be) and the one on the right were a small town bureaucrat (which, in a way, he is).

Part of the current struggle regarding the imperial project is between these two alternatives of overwhelming, indiscriminate violence and tactical negotiations that can translate “politics by other means” into politics.  Photojournalism is needed to show us the two faces of war–and not either one alone.  It is up to others, however, to decide whether the balance will tip one way or the other.

Photographs by Brennan Linsley/Associated Press and Tyler Hicks/The New York Times. The Times story is here, along with a slide show of photographs by Tyler Hicks.

Polarization seems to be the flavor of the year in Washington, cable networks are cashing in on polarized gender roles, and so there should be little surprise when encountering extremes during Fashion Week, where they never go out of style.

“Fashion Week” lasts for months, like a perpetual party of fin de siecle decadence on a yacht floating around the globe.  Two recent shows, one in Paris and the other in Hong Kong, provided polarized examples of where humans might be at the end of this century.

According to one caption, the first photograph presents “creations” by French fashion designer Romain Kremer as part of his Men’s Fall Winter 2010-2011 fashion collection.  I guess in the summer this cyborg would switch to something in aquamarine. Or perhaps the weather will no longer matter, although not for this creature:

This design by Mountain Yam at the Hong Kong show achieves one of the ends of art, which is to transform perception to see the potential in things.  Here what we know to be part of the dress seems to be a natural part of the model herself, and so we can see one morphological possibility for a post-human species that has blended its genetic code with others.  The first design did the same when it made the conjunction of human and machine (and within that, of the human body and the mechanical imitation of an insect eye) appear to be a perfect fit.

Side by side, the suggest two different paths: one toward a cyborg species where ordinary senses can be replaced by powerful electronic systems (or dispensed with for the same reason), and another where the human form returns to nature, part of a brachiated genetic ecosystem that intertwines species in organic harmony.  If you think these two visions are merely my own strange extensions of the designer’s art, look at the background in each photo: in one, the dark tonality and structured designs of an industrialized urban scene; in the other, soft, pastel colors of a reorganized, blended spectrum of light.

By projecting forward, these creations also evoke ancient forms.  The woman could be a Dryad, a tree nymph in Greek mythology, and the robotic figure in his institutional uniform evokes RoboCop, who channeled the Medieval armored knight whose faceplate reproduced the Greek helmet of antiquity.  Even when trying to be highly unconventional, it is difficult to escape the pressure of cultural memory and symbolic form.  Escape isn’t really the point, however, even when considering the post-human.  Moving into that world will only reveal what was always available, both for good and for evil.

With that in mind, we might look again at the two faces above. They are merely models, of course, but both visions, however polarized they might be, seem to lead to the same docility.  That could be a mere artifact of the fashion show, but it also might be thought of as one result, however ironic, of polarization.

Photographs by Jacques Brinon/Associated Press and Mike Clarke/AFP-Getty Images.

Credit:  Matt Wuerker

“Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

In The Vernacular

Exhibition

Art Institute of Chicago

February 6–May 31, 2010

Vernacular photographs—those countless ordinary and utilitarian pictures made for souvenir postcards, government archives, police case files, pin-up posters, networking Web sites, and the pages of magazines, newspapers, or family albums—have been both the inspiration for and the antithesis of fine-art photography for over a century. In their struggle to gain legitimacy in the art world, fine-art photographers at the turn of the 20th century endeavored to distance their work from the amateur, commonplace, and practical photographs that had become so familiar in everyday experience.

This exhibition presents the work of artists who chose instead to strategically use photography’s everyday forms as a source of inspiration, consciously appropriating, reworking, and interrogating the aesthetics, content, and means of distribution associated with vernacular photography. Photographs by Walker Evans, Andy Warhol, Lee Friedlander, Cindy Sherman, Martin Parr, Nikki S. Lee, and others represented in the Art Institute’s permanent collection challenge us to reevaluate the impact, value, and status of the photographs we encounter in our daily lives. These images persuade us to consider the ways in which photographs function as significant bearers of complex meaning, rather than mere descriptions or reflections of the world, whether they grace the walls of a museum, the pages of a magazine, the files in a cabinet, or a living room mantel.

Please note: Some images may be inappropriate for younger visitors.

Photograph: Martin Parr, Fashion Magazine: Fashion Shoot, New York, 1999.  Art Institute of Chicago, David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation Purchase Fund.

The war in Iraq has moved on to Afghanistan and the (relatively few) pictures we are being shown from there lately, such as the one above,  tend to depict a somewhat ordered and ordinary, workaday world—at least for what we imagine everyday life in Afghanistan to be like. The U.S. military seem more like police officers than an occupying force—delighting local children, gathering information, searching out bad guys, and so on.  And for the locals it seems like business as usual, with weekly Shura’s, sellers pedaling their wares in the marketplace, etc.  The Taliban is still a threat, of course, and has to be sought out and neutralized, but all in all, things seem to be going well for our troops who take out time to exercise, help locals with development projects, and look forward to returning home once the job of security is turned over to local police—or so the photographic record would seem to suggest.  Of course, this all ignores the nearly 600 US and allied soldiers who have died in Afghanistan in the past year, including more than 40 in the last month alone—or for that matter the nearly $300 billion dollars we anticipate spending to support the occupation in 2010 alone—but there is a different point to be made.

The photograph below appeared on the front page of the NYT. One might imagine that it records a severe car crash somewhere in the western world.  The car is an SVU and the girl, bloodied and in distress, nevertheless bears all the markings of a western, middle-class or higher existence—notice the clean blouse, stylish sweat pants, and colorful sandals. But there’s the rub, for we would almost never see such a photograph of a U.S. citizen, at least not in the mainstream press, and not of members of middling or upper classes (and certainly not of children). That fact alone should clue us to locating the image in another world—distant and distinct from our own, both physically and culturally.

The caption solves the mystery, as it notes that “A girl sought help on Monday after three bombs exploded within about 10 minutes during Baghdad’s afternoon rush, killing her mother.” The bombing was the result of a regular and coordinated effort by the insurgency to undermine the state’s authority in the face of upcoming parliamentary elections.  From whom the young girl is “seeking help” is not exactly clear, but the photograph’s oddly prominent position above the fold without an accompanying front page story makes it seem that somehow a visual demand is issuing forth from the national unconscious – a vivid reminder not only that all is not well in Iraq, but forever how much we would like to move on from involvement there, we simply cannot. And perhaps this is as it should be, for there is no question but the U.S. must bear a large portion of the responsibility for the current political instability and insurrection in Iraq.  And that responsibility does not abate simply because we chose to leave, having declared our mission a success.

The repressed, it seems, always returns.  And that should give us pause as we witness the photographic record of how well things seem to be going in Afghanistan.

Photo Credit:  Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP; Ayman Oghanna

The current Washington Post/ABC News poll reports that the war in Afghanistan is listed as a priority for the President and the Congress by two percent of the electorate.  Don’t tell that to these guys.

For the record, they are sleeping, not dead.  The photo is gruesome, nonetheless, as it reminds us that there is little difference between a foxhole and a grave.  The long, shallow holes in the earth are too close to the shape and size of a coffin; the soldiers’ bodies are bent as though broken or stiff with rigor mortis, and they are wrapped in sheets that look all too much like shrouds.  The bare face and feet of the figure in the center add to the sense of vulnerability the suffuses the scene, while the covering over the face of the one on the left implies death’s finality.

In this context, one of the blessings of sleep is that you can wake up; another is that before awakening you can forget about where you are.  These Marines were in their holes because they could be attacked at any time.  The deserve some escape from that reality, and sleep is the best they can do in that regard.  The American public probably wants to forget about Afghanistan, too.  There doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about the situation at the moment, and God knows we have plenty of problems at home, right?

Sleep is one thing, denial another.  The willful forgetting of the fighting in Afghanistan may be understandable, but it is not excusable.  The press has largely retreated into feel-good stories about the war, and that, too, can be explained.  (I had to reach back half a year to pull this photo up.) This normalization of war should be resisted, however, as it only abets collective denial of the suffering that is war’s eternal harvest.

Like the soldiers in the photograph, everyone needs to sleep, and denial may be universal as well.  But these Marines were not left unguarded as they sleep, and, likewise, they should not be dropped to the bottom of the list of national concerns.  Because as they are forgotten, the truth of the photo will be completely exposed: the difference between a foxhole and a grave–and between a sleeping Marine and a dead one–is only a matter of time.

Photograph by David Guttenfelder/Associated Press.

Photo Credit:  Luke McGregor/Reuters; Graffiti Attributed to Banksy

“Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.