The authors' case studies of iconic photos in this book continue to amaze me. I especially was struck by the follow up photo of Kim Phuc and her child and the authors' analysis of how a political event has moved into the sphere of domesticity for resolution. Also, in that same chapter, we find another reference to Disney in -- "the Disney theme park that would have been located near the Manassas battlefield" (200). The accompanying political cartoon is particularly shocking, maybe in part because of the expression on Goofy's face. Again, an analaysis of the relationship of the political unconscious to Disney seems to be something that, at least if we take the examples from the texts we've been reading in class as an indication, would lend itself productively to further research.
Several pages later in the chapter, the authors bring in another re-appropriation of the napalm photo in their analysis of an editorial cartoon that appeared in 2004 depicting a shrouded detainee fleeing behind Kim Phuc. The cartoon shares the iconic photo's composition, with the soldiers walking in the rear and the young man in the front silently mourning. From the cartoon, the authors draw a comparison between Abu Gharib and Vietnam. They say, "Once again, war crimes are occurring because of U.S. policy, once again, the public is trapped in a space between pain and indifference; once again, the war will not go away ... Worse yet, there is room on the road for more figures to be added as Americans continue to repeat history rather than learn from it" (202).
On one hand, I agree that the comparison is effective. Especially in the visual rendering, the image is shocking. However, in the conclusion to the book the authors return to a consideration of the photos of detainee abuse. Although I don't particularly mind that the authors have been up front about their politics throughout the text (in fact I agree with/ most if not all of their leanings), I'm not sure if I agree with all of their analysis of these photos.
Throughout the text, the authors have referred to the place of professional photojournalists in capturing iconic moments on film. (A separate issue here, especially when considering WJT Mitchel's description of the relationship between image and text is that many, if not all, professional photojournalists today are often referred to by their employers as multi-media journalists. They write, post to the web and shoot video in addition to taking photos.) However, with the Abu Gharib photos, these were not professionally shot. I would have liked to see more consideration given to the ways in which these photos function differently because they were privately shot and leaked through the Internet and therefore suggest something has changed about our world today.
Two additional points. First, the authors claim that learning of the detainee abuse "stunned the world" (292). Although it would be hard to argue that these photos did not stun, I wonder whether the influence they had was significantly less than it would have been in a different time period when the reading public was not constantly bombarded with images generally. Related to this first point is that it seems a significant number of Americans believe that torture is acceptable. Not having done a study or read any recent polls on this, it's hard to say with any authority. However, a fellow grad student at UF recently discussed torture with his class, and, according to him, only one student spoke against it. The other students apparently said they thought it was necessary. My second point here is related to the authors' claim that the photos of detainee abuse "revealed a pornography of violence at the heart of the occupation" (294). I would extend this critique to say that there is a collective "pornography of violence" in our culture (although culture may become a problematic term here, and I take issue with the degree to which it gets used to describe things like "print culture"). There was, around the time that these photos came to light, a growing resurgence of films that have been described as torture porn. I would argue that the success of these films was directly related to the invasion of Iraq and the nation's need to make visible a type of violence that had been authorized yet kept hidden from sight for the most part.
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