From: Emile Tobenfeld (a.k.a Dr. T) (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jan 14 2009 - 21:41:59 PST
It;s been said (if I recall correctly by a general critical of such
tactics), that many of the soldiers learned some of their methods
from the TV show '24'
At 7:09 PM -0600 1/14/09, Fred Camper wrote:
>Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
>
>>But surely Fred would agree that photography and cinema can provide
>>documents that change history and the comprehension of historical
>>events....
>
>Yes, of course. My post was a polemic meant for a particular context.
>
>But:
>
>>...the Abu Graib photos, for example....
>
>But in some ways this makes my point. Seen alone, they were
>meaningless porn, and they were widely misunderstood as reflecting
>on the bad character of particular soldiers (rather than, for
>example, particular Presidents and Vice Presidents). What did they
>tell us, without the knowledge of what the participating American
>soldiers had bee told about how to treat the prisoners, and about
>how untrained soldiers very often respond to being basically told to
>abuse prisoners? What made me so angry about the Abu Gharaib photos,
>aside rom the actual abuse they showed, is that notably lacking in
>the discourse around them was a statement the simple fact that
>things like that happen in virtually ALL wars. That's what war does:
>it brutalizes almost everyone. Not all soldiers behave that way, of
>course, but you start a war with a lot of soldiers in it, some will.
>
>In our popular culture, though, it's images without context that
>dominate. It's the perverse images that people remember, not the
>larger contextualizing truths.
>
>How do you convey the real truth about all wars in a film, except
>with voiceover and text, in which case, wouldn't an essay on the
>subject be better and clearer?
>
>>...Taken together, Rory Kennedy's Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Alex
>>Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, and Errol Morris's Standard
>>Operating Procedure provide an astonishing understanding of images
>>AND the Abu Graib events....
>
>I haven't seen 'em, but I'll take your word for it.
>
>Fred Camper
>Chicago
>
>
>__________________________________________________________________
>For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
-- Emile Tobenfeld, Ph. D. Video Producer and Digital Photographer Image Processing Specialist Video for your HEAD! Boris FX http://www.foryourhead.com http://www.borisfx.com My photography can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/22231918@N06/collections/72157603627170351/ My videos can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/Tobenfeld "Don't make book, if you cannot cover bets." -- Tom Lehrer __________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.