In an interview with Azar Nafisi, the author of the widely acclaimed Reading
Lolita in Tehran, the "bookish journalist" (as he describes himself)
Robert Birnbaum asked: "Somewhere you had mentioned your disappointment that
post-9/11 [September 11, 2001] you were deeply disappointed that 40,000
Iranians marched in the streets in sympathy with the US and no one covered it
or noted it. Which is a reminder that people, at least, that what people don't
want to see they won't see."
Nafisi replied, "That was really maddening. I don't know if you remember the
coverage at the time - because even if two people
in Pakistan were raging - and here are these people who came out despite
government warnings. They were beaten and taken to jail, and it was such a
beautiful thing, lighting candles and bringing roses, and they didn't show it.
Because that image then would break the stereotype of Iranians as all being
against the Great Satan. I don't know what it was. Around that time, whenever
the Iranian government staged demonstrations against the US, they [media] would
show that."
Indeed. What people don't want to see they won't see - this, however, has not
only to do with whether an event is covered or not. Numerous events have been
somewhat covered and hardly anyone took and takes note. Think of Sudan, the
Congo, Zimbabwe etc. We only see what we are prepared to see - what our eyes
register is not the important aspect of seeing.
Here's an example: if you show me a photograph of President George W Bush and I
happen to believe that he, as a British journalist once put it, is "not exactly
the brightest bulb in the chandelier" and remarkably incompetent in his job, I
will exactly see that: a not terribly bright and remarkably incompetent man.
Regardless of what the photo shows.
By the way, incompetence cannot be shown, it can only be ascribed to somebody.
"I see only what I know," Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said. To which one feels
like adding: or what I believe. Given that we all grew up hearing the opposite
- that seeing is believing (and it occasionally indeed is) - let me elaborate.
One of the most famous photos by Robert Capa, who died in 1954 in Indochina
after he stepped on a land mine, is of a Spanish Republican militiaman falling
to the ground after being shot. As a picture, it does not tell us anything. It
is the caption that tells us what we ought to "see". It reads: "Robert Capa's
camera catches a Spanish soldier the instant he is dropped by a bullet through
the head in front of Cordoba."
Had the caption read, "A militiaman slips and falls while training for action,"
as Philip Knightley remarked in The First Casualty, the impact of the
picture would certainly not have been the same. In other words, the story that
accompanies the picture is often more important than the picture. To put it
even more distinctly: it is the information (the beliefs, the prejudices etc)
that we bring to a picture that defines how we will eventually read it.
By the way, Capa was always reluctant to talk about his famous picture but we
know now, thanks to his friend photographer Hansel Mieth, who once worked for
Life, that Capa and the militiaman were fooling around when all of a sudden
their game turned into real war: the militiaman who played war for the camera
was shot by fascist soldiers who suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Again: it is the information to the picture that determines how we "see" it.
More important: it is the information that we are willing to consider. Here's
how D B C Pierre put it in his novel Vernon God Little:
People
decide with or without the facts - if you don't get out there and paint your
paradigm, someone'll paint it for you.
My what?
Pa-ra-dime. You never heard of paradigm shift? Example: you see a man with his
hand up your granny's ass. What do you think?
Bastard.
Right. Then you learn a deadly bug crawled up there, and the man has put aside
his disgust to save Granny. What do you think now?
Hero. You can tell he ain't met my nana.
There you go, a paradigm shift. The action doesn't change - the information you
use to judge it does. You were ready to crucify the guy because you didn't have
the facts. Now you want to shake his hand.
I don't think so.
I mean figuratively, asshole, he laughs, punching out six of my ribs. Facts may
seem black and white by the time they hit your TV screen, but professional
teams sift through mountains of gray to get them there. You need positioning,
like a product in the market - the jails are full of people who didn't manage
their positions.
While I do not believe (as Nafisi does) that
showing images of events such as the one where, after September 11, 40,000
Iranians marched in the streets of Tehran in sympathy with the US "would break
the stereotype of Iranians as all being against the Great Satan" (it clearly
takes a bit more), I'm nevertheless all in favor of showing such pictures, in
fact, the more pictures (as diverse as possible) we get to see, the better -
for they give us at least the opportunity to recognize aspects of life we
otherwise might miss.
This
picture, for instance (see box at right).
Pictures can make one see and, more important: they can make one feel.
Provided we really look at them and are open-minded and willing enough to be
challenged. If not, we are condemned to "see" what we already know - and will
thus continue to "see" what we believe.
Hans Durrer has degrees in law, journalism studies, and applied
linguistics from universities in Switzerland, Wales and Australia. He has
lived, worked and traveled in Southeast Asia, Cuba, Southern Africa,
Central America, Argentina, Brazil, China, Switzerland and Turkey. He is author
of Ways of Perception: On Visual and Intercultural Communication (White
Lotus Press, Bangkok, 2006).
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