[lit-ideas] Re: News via the web
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 02:23:56 EST
In a message dated 4/2/2004 8:57:07 PM Eastern Standard Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
My complaint was about the purportedly representational
images, such as those on TV, which purport to show you
in an objective manner exactly what happened and how
it happened. In fact these images, even when not
censored or pre-selected or staged as they often are,
only show a small piece of reality.
These images serve the same function as religious or national symbols,
serving to shield people from complexity. It's metonymy all the way.
First some missile attacks presented as a fireworks show by satellite phone.
Then 24/7 night-vision green images of tanks rolling toward Baghdad. Sand
storms. Press briefing comic relief from Baghdad Bob. A few firefights in
villages
captured by distant cameras. Forces entering Baghdad.
Then the statue of Saddam toppled. And again. And again. Some probably hoped
the repeated image of the fall of Saddam's statue would suggest the Berlin
Wall coming down, as if a gigantic statue of Stalin (Saddam's model) had landed
face first in the dust. But other images, most of them angry or violent, soon
contradicted that falling statue. If this was East Berlin, it was the wrong
century, as if the people of East Berlin, glancing around at the western part
of
town, had hastily begun rebuilding the Berlin Wall.
Now it's the bomb du jour, a small trail of smoke or a close-up on a burning
car. Of course it's all propaganda, which is to say rhetoric, to use simple
images to stand for anything.
One can't see everything. Plus everything, if you saw it, would be boring. As
anyone who's tried to write dialogue knows, transcribing what people actually
say produces the most boring dialogue. One must choose and cut, choose and
cut.
Eric
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