http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/2012/04/the-invisible-costs-of-war/ ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHS, PUBLIC CULTURE, AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY Tue, 21 May 2013 22:27:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/2012/04/the-invisible-costs-of-war/#comment-7067 lucaites Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:16:18 +0000 http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/?p=11083#comment-7067 I don’t know how I missed the skulls in this photograph, but I did. One more manifestation of the in/visible. Nice pick up!

]]> http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/2012/04/the-invisible-costs-of-war/#comment-7053 Jeremy Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:00:57 +0000 http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/?p=11083#comment-7053 And that reaction . . . to turn our back and refocus attention to the smells, sights, touches of the bodies around us.

]]> http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/2012/04/the-invisible-costs-of-war/#comment-7050 Jeremy Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:32:04 +0000 http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/?p=11083#comment-7050 “That they could not see—or chose not to see—the death as a suicide is unclear. What is clear is the mother’s grief as she struggles to maintain physical contact with her absent son by connecting with his things, including his shirt which retains his scent.” I wonder if the question of seeing suicide/not might be glimpsed in the constant presence of death, Thanatos, creeping in from the corner, over the mother’s shoulder. Perhaps “creeping” is not the right word because it seems to be stable in its place, as well a a stack of skulls in the corner of the room. A shadow then? Haunting? Also, the motto: “Kill ‘Em All, Let God Sort ‘Em Out” is inverted, reflected, mirrored in the image, perhaps aiming the judgment to the “homefront,” hinting at our own culpability and yet a kind of resignation (not in a pejorative sense) we have trouble seeing. How do we see and cultivate our devotions to death? To be sure, there are other ways to “see” skulls, but in this scene, the “smiling” winged totem of the Marines hints at a religious creed, “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” (Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His), and a heavy metal hymn (Metallica) that sing of how we (soldiers/civilians) limit empathy and fail to account for our abilities to act. “Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back,” is the quote from the film “Gladiator,” but I wonder if this image models another reaction we might heed.

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