Apr 14, 2013
Nov 28, 2008
Aug 09, 2009
Jul 21, 2007
Feb 09, 2011
Apr 16, 2012

Sight Gag: If Only It Were a Joke

original

 

Credit: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities/cbpp.org

Sight Gag is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.

 0 Comments

Civil Rights Photos and How NOT to Repeat History

As I write this the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments regarding California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.  Many other states have done the same, including North Carolina, which voted last May 8 to pass a constitutional ban by a 21 point margin.  Only recently, however, have I learned of an ingenious visual advocacy campaign against that measure:

e1a1_restaurant_med

Get it?  Other images do the same: for example, separate and not so equal water fountains are labeled “straight” and “gay.”  The images were the work of Every1Against1, an advocacy group opposing the ban.  (The group’s name reflects the name of the ban on the North Carolina ballot: Amendment One.)  By putting gay rights into the visual template of Jim Crow signage, these photos perfectly illustrate how the struggle for–and resistance to–social justice can be a case of history repeating itself from one era to the next.

What the images didn’t do is turn the tide of votes for the ban.  It’s not likely that any one form of advocacy could do so.  One has to wonder, however, if failure wasn’t preordained in the images.  Their basic assumption is that the Jim Crow signs were wrong–a cruel, immoral practice that no modern society would allow to stand.  In the case of North Carolina–and dozens of other states–that assumption may be mistaken.   I’d like to think otherwise, and the times they are a-changing again, but exactly when will a majority of ordinary citizens come to their senses and prove that they really do believe in the constitutional principle of equality?

Fortunately, the founders recognized that majority rule needed to be balanced with judicial oversight.  And so now all eyes are on the Court.  Let’s hope that the justices have a suitable sense of history, one that would help these images become relics or curiosities–and not something that we ever have to see again.

 0 Comments

War’s Bricolage

Reuters selected this photograph as its best of the day, and it is indeed striking.  But why?

Syrian rebel fighter in house

The caption said, “A Free Syrian Army fighter takes position inside a room as he points his weapon through a hole in Aleppo’s Saif al-Dawla district March 20, 2013.”  And that is what he is doing: positioning himself.  Hardly a dramatic action, and it is occurring in a still, spare, beige room, hardly a dramatic setting.

The room is no longer being used for its intended purpose, and a prior time of disruption is evident in the disordered decor: curtains down, furnishings strewn about, a hole punched in the wall.  It hardly seems fitted to its new use, however, for that delicate, foofoo lamp will never qualify as military hardware.  Yet “irony” seems too easy a label, as it can’t account for the way the soldier dominates the room.  Something important is happening, but what?

The sense of stasis is one clue: he is being posed for us, so that we can slow down and look carefully.  This is the opposite of an action photo, for the point of his positioning and aiming and firing that enormous weapon is still to come, involving an event that will occur outside the frame.  Instead, the point of the photograph is reflection, as if he has gathered into that space an equal and opposite concentration of energy to balance the impending gunfire.

The next clue is the way that he has repurposed the furniture.  Arranging the chairs and stacking the pillows to create his makeshift pillbox, he has given the room the same degree of thoughtfulness that went into its original decoration.  And he could do it with the same degree of cool concentration, perhaps taking his time to try out different configurations of the pillows, because he already is thoroughly at home in the business of war.

Which gets to the third clue: the natty self-possession in the way he is dressed.  You can expect to see that sweater and coveralls in next year’s fashion shows, and the beret could belong on any craftsman as he was making a cabinet or a musical instrument or a book.  Forget the camouflage, and a whole life could be surmised from his clothing and concentration; he’s even wearing a wedding ring.

Which brings us back to the room: it, too, represented a way of life, but one that now is being destroyed.  And so the deep intelligence of the photo emerges: it is documenting nothing less than how war not only destroys people and things, but also remakes the world in its own image.  This is the genius of war: it captures and rechannels the same skills, energies, and capabilities that otherwise are used to sustain peaceful, civil societies.

Force alone can do a lot of damage and thus can account for much of war’s power, but that still is the least of it.  As Chris Hedges observed, “war is a force that gives us meaning.”  What the photograph above reveals is just how thorough and nuanced that makeover can be, not least because of how it is accomplished by giving ordinary people practical tasks.

Kenneth Burke once observed that war motivates extreme levels of cooperation, albeit on behalf of the worst forms of competition.  (That is irony, and more than that.)  War also can motivate rearranging a living room on behalf of killing.  As the war “progresses,” the fighters can find themselves wholly occupied, engaged, and fulfilled by the work of destruction.  Why not: it rewards their resourcefulness.

This is the challenge that peace has to meet.

Photograph by Giath Taha/Reuters.

 4 Comments

Stop and Go

Screen shot 2013-03-24 at 9.19.58 PM

I spent much way too much  of the morning yesterday listening to the Sunday talk shoes where the primary topic of discussion concerned the role that government should play in regulating our lives.  Gay marriage, sugared water, and guns were the focus, but at its heart the real concern was whether the state should guarantee liberty and freedom or public order.  What all seemed to forget (or ignore) was that this is not a simple opposition that can or should be resolved easily or once and for all in one direction to the exclusion of the other.  A world in which all are free to do whatever they want has a name (anarchy), as does a world in which there is total order and control (fascism) and neither is particularly salutary.  Indeed, what makes liberal democracy such a difficult and precarious political institution is that it sits on a rather narrow precipice between the two, its success dependent on the necessity of maintaining equilibrium between liberty and order and predicated on some measure of public trust in the institutions that administer that balance.  And therein lies the real problem, for at the current moment our political institutions suffer from a deficit of public trust.

The photograph above appeared randomly in one of the daily slideshows yesterday afternoon, and in its way it displays a simple model of how government regulations often work effectively in the background and how they rely upon public trust to manage the tension between liberty and order.  Without stop lights our public thoroughfares would be both chaotic and a hazard to vehicles and pedestrians alike.  The regulation of traffic through alternating signals to “stop” and “go” make it possible for all to use the roads equitably and in a manner that is both orderly and safe.  Shut at dusk and in a snow storm tinged haze that otherwise makes visibility problematic, the alternating red and green lights mark the normal rhythm of the thoroughfare, designating zones of free movement and public safety.  And as the image above indicates, the traffic seems to move pretty well.

What makes the system work, of course, is the trust that one has in the system itself: a trust that the regulations maximize both the flow of traffic and the safety of all; a trust that the regulations recognize and address the competing interests of all in more or less equitable terms—or when equity is sacrificed that it is done for reasons that serve a compelling public interest; and perhaps most importantly, a trust that pedestrians and vehicles will both honor the regulations, yielding to the other as the rule of law dictates.  Without such trust the regulations themselves will fail and the legitimacy of the system itself will be at risk.  The potential problem is gestured to in the above photograph as we see pedestrians who appear to be crossing against the light and thus challenging the rule of law. There is no traffic in the foreground and so it would seem like they are safe and that, at least in this instance, they do not impede the public order.  Perhaps they have good reasons for their transgression and we should certainly be willing to take that into account.  That, after all, is what we have the courts for.  Still, the presumption is against them, and their refusal to follow the rules is both a clear threat to the prevailing institutions of law and a reminder that we need someone to be responsible for making sure that the regulations are upheld in order to secure the public trust. Without both our streets would be neither free nor orderly.

The point to be made is that the problem of government regulation writ large, rather like the problem of regulating traffic, is never as simple as the relationship between stop and go.  It also requires a profound trust in the rule of law that animates such regulation as well as those who work to manage and maintain the complex tension between liberty and order without sacrificing one to the other—or imagining that such a sacrifice could ever be in the best interests of the larger society.

Photo Credit:  Charlie Riedel/AP

 0 Comments

Sight Gag: Just Follow the Arrow

Unknown

Credit:  James A. Schultz; the sign is at Denfert-Rochereau, Paris, France

Sight Gag is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.

 0 Comments

Ten Years After: Lest We Forget

Unknown

Peter Turnley is a good friend of NCN, but more important, he was on the front line of photographers who refused the invitation to be embedded in Iraq and brought us some of the most powerful and compelling images of from both the first (1991) and second (2003) Gulf Wars.  A small portfolio of his images can be seen here on the 10th anniversary of the most recent conflagration: Lest we forget.

 0 Comments

Iraq, Cheney, and the Lessons of History

There are a number of slide shows (including here, here, here, here, and here) commemorating the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.  They will drag you back into that lost decade and tear at your heart.  All the wasted lives and treasure, and for what?  The expressed war aims were all lies, and even the neoconservatives’ real reasons for the war are in tatters: the country is not a stable ally in the region and Israel is not more secure.  But don’t tell it to this guy.

matthews-leno-cheney

Photographs of Dick Cheney are not being featured this week, and that is a serious oversight.  You can see Colin Powell holding up a vial of faux anthrax at the UN, but he was a stooge and visual media played almost no part in the government’s campaign of deception.  Those who like to lay the blame for bad judgment on visual media ought to take a long look at this sorry episode in US history: an unnecessary and stupid war was sold almost entirely with words, thank you, whereas images helped considerably in exposing the truth of the matter–for example, at Abu Ghraib.

But I digress.  Even if there is blame aplenty to spread around, Cheney, more than anyone else, is the reason the US went to war.

And his words are in the news this week, as CBS has aired an interview in which he says–really–that “If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute.”

One might think that this is to be expected, and democracies naturally have highly partisan true believers on all sides.  He gets to speak his mind, and so do we.  Most of us won’t have artfully crafted interviews played on major media outlets, but in principle it’s the same, right?

Even if the playing field were level, the lack of reflection evident in this former high-ranking government official should be seen as very disturbing.  He is modeling not simply a difference of opinion, but a refusal to learn from history.

The remark I quoted is being repeated widely across the media this week, but the trailer for the show includes another statement that I find even more revealing.  The clip begins with the interviewer asking Cheney stock questions: What is your favorite virtue?  What do you appreciate most in your friends?  What is your idea of happiness?  These questions are hardly surprising, and Cheney provides stock answers: “Integrity.”  “Honesty.”  Etc.  And then another standard question is posed: What do you consider your main fault?  Whereas he had answered crisply before, here Cheney puts his head down and ponders the question: “My main fault. . . . Um, well, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my faults, I guess would be my answer.”

And there you have it.  Perhaps that’s not the mark of a criminal mind, but it sure could help.  If you don’t reflect on your faults, you can’t ever really go wrong.

Cheney need not ever think otherwise, but fortunately a significant majority of Americans now see that the war should never have happened.  That’s not enough, however.  If the nation is to have a conscience, it can’t think like Dick Cheney.   We should look at the photographs again, and consider the many, many mistakes that were made: by the government, by the press, by opinion leaders, and by ordinary citizens. The country was played for a fool, and by someone who would do it again in a minute.  If you don’t believe it, just ask him.

 1 Comment

The Man Behind the Curtain

pope_francis_1_007

The run up to the coronation of Pope Francis this past week was a sight to see.  And I mean that in the most literal of terms.  For once we get past the litany of “firsts” – first non-European Pope, first Latin American (much, no doubt, to the chagrin of Fox News, who was surely betting on an American Pope, not a Pope from the “Americas”), first Jesuit, and so on – what becomes pretty clear is that what we are witnessing is the ritualized, modernist spectacle of the medieval appointment of a divine rights monarch.

Neither rituals nor spectacles are inherently problematic as a general matter.  But what is perhaps important to note in the hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs leading up to the puff of white smoke and then the new Pope’s first public appearance beneath the carefully prepared red curtain that shrouds the Loggia of the Blessings of St. Peter’s Basillica are the ways in which the ritual is colonized by modern mass media technologies to move backwards in time towards the re-feudalization of religious and political power and an era when the public had no visual presence at all. It is a spectacle of absolute sovereignty.

The photograph below is telling in this regard, as it is shot from the Pope’s eye view looking out upon the masses from his balcony.  Well above the people below and at some distance the Pope emerges deus ex machina, as through a proscenium arch; God’s lieutenant on earth, he simply appears as if from behind a curtain to be seen and little more.  Indeed, there is even the sense in which he need not be seen at all, as the ritual itself guarantees his divine appearance, material or not.

Medieval Spectacle Part 1

For all of its appeals to social justice, the modern Church remains a secretive, hierarchical, medieval institution, its political machinations hidden from public view, and so there is probably nothing all that strange about this.  It is not as if the Catholic Church has ever endorsed or contributed to the emergence of what Jüergen Habermas referred to as the “bourgeois public sphere” or the ensuing late modern politics that recognize the popular sovereignty of multiple publics.  What is odd, however, is how the contemporary western mass media have played along, emphasizing—and in its way, valorizing and endorsing— the ritualized spectacle of what has to be among the least democratic, western institutions to wield legitimate social and political power.

But for all that, the occasional photograph slips through to resist the dominant narrative and remind us that an active visual public persists and that such spectacles are often fictions contrived for our edification.  As an example, consider this photograph of a Roman Centurion, surely amongst the fiercest warriors of the ancient world, now consigned to hawking bottled water and roasted pork sandwiches made to your specifications in Rome’s Piazza di Pietra.

Roman Centurion

Rome and the Vatican are not identical, of course, but that this image has made its way into international circulation at the same time that the carefully calculated ritual and spectacle of Pope Francis’s impending enthronement are taking place and it should surely give us pause to consider what we have been seeing—at least on the public side of the curtain—and how we are implicated in it as spectators.

Photo Credit:  Eric Gaillard/Reuters; Alessia Paradis/ABACAUSA; Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

 1 Comment

Sight Gag: Dow Hits 17 Year High!

Good-Economic-News-1

 

Credit:  Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Sight Gag is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.

 1 Comment

The Habits of Making Bodies Strange

Guest Correspondent: Emily Dianne Cram

 Cram Image 1

A fair skinned white woman pivots casually in the middle of a crowded urban sidewalk, her hands tucked away inside mint green shorts.  Her thumbs steadily line the top of her hips, as she casts a flat look somewhere beyond the frame of the photograph.  And even though she occupies the center of the image, adorned with vibrant colors and tight fitting summer chic, her body is not necessarily the curious object of the photograph.  We might keep our focus on her as we imagine what circumstances created this moment of pause—perhaps she’s a tourist taking in the sites or maybe even a fashion model.  After all, her pose in this moving public space breaks with the uniform walking of the crowd behind her, dressed in black business suits and other muted tones.  Yet, even though the camera invites our attention to her body, it also calls attention to the grimaced look on the face of the spectator to her right who fixates her disapproving gaze on the woman’s body.  It is difficult to identify the valence of her expression.  Perhaps she disapproves of such a bold aesthetic on a female body that violates norms of slender and seamlessness.  Or perhaps it is a look of disgust generated by a body’s excess and its inability to be properly contained by standardized clothing.

I encountered Hailey Morris-Cafiero ‘s photograph series “Wait Watchers” after a Facebook friend shared a blog link describing her project.  “Wait Watchers” relies on the photographic potential of everyday life, and documents the encounters Morris-Cafiero’s body has with strangers in public spaces.   After staging a camera in crowded public scenes, Morris-Cafiero waits to be looked at as the camera documents policing glances like the one above.  As I scrolled through a number of photographs, I felt a stunning sense of familiarity in each scene, as a fat woman who also often catches the looks of others in public policing my muffin top.*  The photos created a strong sense of identification with the experience of being looked at in such a way, and encouraged me to share the photos with my own Facebook network.  Others “liked” and shared the blog as well, drawing comments from others ranging from the need to reflect on their own practices of public looking to the ethics of such an artistic project.  But more, I was caught by repetition in the claim that the stranger in each image could be looking at something else, not necessarily directly at Morris-Cafiero’s body, and thus, not engaging in an act of ridicule with certainty.

The desire for certainty of the alignment between relations of looking and being looked-at evokes what Ariella Azoulay terms a professional way of engaging with photography.  The professional gaze seeks little more than to identify and categorize.  However, even though Morris-Cafiero’s photo series asks for public witness to her experiences, to say the photos simply seek to shame the particular individuals caught looking on camera misses the project’s power.

Cram 2

In this photo, one not featured in the initial blog, we gain a different sense of the stakes of the project.  Here, the camera’s presence is manifest: two young teens moving through what seems to be a tourist space stare directly at the camera witnessing a crowded sidewalk.  Here, their movements are as much on display as Morris-Cafiero, who seems to be adjusting the lens of her camera or bending her body towards the ground below her.  Meanwhile, another young tourist looks in the direction of Morris-Cafiero, covering a smirk and an emerging laugh with her sleeve covered hand.  The gesture demonstrates the limits of performing bourgeois propriety, as she attempts to contain and privatize what is likely to be an act of publicly shaming Morris-Cafiero.

Both photos featured here draw attention to habits of looking that make bodies appear strange in public.  More broadly, the project lends focus to encounters with bodies constituted as out of place because they violate aesthetic norms or because they violate dominant logics of how bodies should properly occupy public spaces. Morris-Cafiero’s body interrupts the efficient flow and movement of others on sidewalks or in alleyways as much as she violates fashionable gender regimes.

And so even as the question of certainty animated by the professional gaze might motivate us to contemplate the motive of onlookers (is she really being mocked?), those questions matter less than how the photographic spectator is asked to intervene in the problem that the photo series suggests: how does one engage with the social relation of looking and lookism? Morris-Cafiero’s project illustrates how relations of looking can operate as both sites of surveillance of strange bodies for their laughable deviance and as a mode of looking back, making these disciplining gestures the object on display.  By making relations of looking visible to photographic spectators, Morris-Cafiero’s is both spectator and actor. How one intervene in these two fields depends on the spectator.  Because the photographic spectator is also witness to these acts, the question is, what is our obligation?  The professional gaze is a possibility, yet it diminishes the potential of the civic as a mode of transforming the social conditions that make these looking relations possible.  And so do we pity Morris-Cafiero?  Empathize with the sheer banality of these moments?  Shame the watchers?  Seek compassion?

We will have to wait and watch.

*NOTE: “Fat” and “fatness” are often evoked as derogatory ways of describing bodies in gendered, raced, and classed terms.  My use of these categories operates in tandem with writers, thinkers, and activists working to understand fat embodiments beyond the registers of medicalization and aesthetic norms.

Emily Dianne Cram is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University.  She can be contacted at emcram@indiana.edu.

 2 Comments