posting on behalf of Laura:
Our reading from Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others resonated in many ways with my viewing of Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary about Abu Ghraib made in 2008 by Errol Morris. We watched the opening 20-30 minutes of the film in my Documentary Film and Video class last week. The Abu Ghraib phenomenon and the documentary’s treatment of it illustrate “the power of photography to define, not merely record, the most abominable realities” (24).
First of all, I was struck by how the photographs taken in Abu Ghraib differ significantly in intent from the style of war photography Sontag seems mainly to be addressing. These were photographs taken by the perpetrators of violence and humiliation; in documenting these incidents the perpetrators amplified them. That is, the documentation was part of the humiliation, and the perpetrators were in part posing and performing acts of violence for the benefit of the cameras present. And the images themselves actively humiliated--both in the moments that they were taken and in the fact of their permanence and verisimilitude--because they positioned (and fixed) the prison guards as powerful and the (anonymous) prisoners as powerless. The photographed prisoners of Abu Ghraib remind me of the anonymous Cambodians and “the documentation of this atrocity courtesy of the Khmer Rouge record keepers, who had each sit for a photograph just before being executed” (60). In these photographs, Sontag says, “the viewer is in the same position as the lackey behind the camera; the experience is sickening” (61). The same is true of the photos taken in Abu Ghraib. We are forced into uncomfortable identification, not with the victims, but with the perpetrators. As Sontag says earlier in the reading, ”there is shame as well as shock in looking at the close-up of a real horror” (42), and our shame in looking only intensifies when we understand that the documenting camera has been invested with this kind of humiliating, flagrant power. That we might as well be behind the camera, because we are powerless to stop the violence and may even be capable of it.
The interesting thing about the documentary is that we are allowed access to participants of both the violence that occurred and the documentation of that violence. There is an uncomfortable intimacy forged between the documentary’s viewers and the personalities of the perpetrators, many of whom are alive (several, I think, committed suicide) and have completed their prison terms, as well as the time period in which these atrocities occurred. The documentary, which was released five years after the photos surfaced, denies us any kind of distance. These are contemporary atrocities perpetrated by ordinary people, each of whom has a personal tale that is related to the audience with all the ceremony of an everyday anecdote and with none of the visible regret or shame that I expected. The documentary’s strategy in this respect is exemplified by its title, Standard Operating Procedure, which suggests that the horror it documents is fundamentally mundane.
At the same time, though, the style of filmmaking Errol Morris adopts is counterproductive to its narrative and theme. Yes, our access to the real people behind the controversy amplifies our shameful relationship with the images. But presumably in an effort to entertain a mainstream audience, Morris makes choices that distract from and confuse this relationship. The documentary has a weirdly cinematic score by Danny Elfman, which sounds, as you might expect, like it was ripped from a Tim Burton movie. The interviews are intercut with both the photographs in question and, more frequently, slow-motion reenactments that are almost funny in their melodrama; they resemble fiction more than they resemble documentary. They read as cheap and disingenuous, particularly because they are in such close proximity to images that are “real” and evidential. These choices distract, probably purposefully, from the authenticity of the original images and their undeniable “verisimilitude, that is, shock” (38). I’m not sure how successful this strategy is in alleviating the audience’s discomfort, since all it produces is disbelief and distrust in the filmmaker. The film’s failure to present itself as wholly “authentic” relates to Sontag’s contention that “[for] the photography of atrocity, people want the weight of witnessing without the taint of artistry, which is equated with insincerity or mere contrivance” (26).
Finally, I think it is significant that the documentary’s two main interview subjects are female. The women interviewed were prison guards and perpetrators of violence and humiliation against their prisoners, complicating, but not entirely disproving, the idea that “war is a man’s game, that the killing machine has a gender, and it is male” (6). These women’s stories are very much about their experiences as women in the chauvinistic culture of the U.S. army. They illustrate the documentary’s larger point-- that people will rationalize in whatever way they can the horrors in which they participate. Still, the women explicitly draw connections between the dominant masculinity of army culture and their own wrongdoing. They suggest that their wrongdoing is a result of the “masculinizing" effects of the military’s specific biases and pressures.
I’ve gone on too long, but I think Abu Ghraib, and the simultaneously notable and mundane presence of women in those photographs, are fascinating things to consider in light of this book, particularly because it was published in 2003. It’s also interesting to consider that the original “shock” of the Abu Ghraib photographs has largely faded (and did not have much of an impact in conduct or policy). This is true to Sontag’s doubts regarding the power of shocking photographs to “unite people of good will," especially because these horrific images are nearly cliches.
Our reading from Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others resonated in many ways with my viewing of Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary about Abu Ghraib made in 2008 by Errol Morris. We watched the opening 20-30 minutes of the film in my Documentary Film and Video class last week. The Abu Ghraib phenomenon and the documentary’s treatment of it illustrate “the power of photography to define, not merely record, the most abominable realities” (24).
First of all, I was struck by how the photographs taken in Abu Ghraib differ significantly in intent from the style of war photography Sontag seems mainly to be addressing. These were photographs taken by the perpetrators of violence and humiliation; in documenting these incidents the perpetrators amplified them. That is, the documentation was part of the humiliation, and the perpetrators were in part posing and performing acts of violence for the benefit of the cameras present. And the images themselves actively humiliated--both in the moments that they were taken and in the fact of their permanence and verisimilitude--because they positioned (and fixed) the prison guards as powerful and the (anonymous) prisoners as powerless. The photographed prisoners of Abu Ghraib remind me of the anonymous Cambodians and “the documentation of this atrocity courtesy of the Khmer Rouge record keepers, who had each sit for a photograph just before being executed” (60). In these photographs, Sontag says, “the viewer is in the same position as the lackey behind the camera; the experience is sickening” (61). The same is true of the photos taken in Abu Ghraib. We are forced into uncomfortable identification, not with the victims, but with the perpetrators. As Sontag says earlier in the reading, ”there is shame as well as shock in looking at the close-up of a real horror” (42), and our shame in looking only intensifies when we understand that the documenting camera has been invested with this kind of humiliating, flagrant power. That we might as well be behind the camera, because we are powerless to stop the violence and may even be capable of it.
The interesting thing about the documentary is that we are allowed access to participants of both the violence that occurred and the documentation of that violence. There is an uncomfortable intimacy forged between the documentary’s viewers and the personalities of the perpetrators, many of whom are alive (several, I think, committed suicide) and have completed their prison terms, as well as the time period in which these atrocities occurred. The documentary, which was released five years after the photos surfaced, denies us any kind of distance. These are contemporary atrocities perpetrated by ordinary people, each of whom has a personal tale that is related to the audience with all the ceremony of an everyday anecdote and with none of the visible regret or shame that I expected. The documentary’s strategy in this respect is exemplified by its title, Standard Operating Procedure, which suggests that the horror it documents is fundamentally mundane.
At the same time, though, the style of filmmaking Errol Morris adopts is counterproductive to its narrative and theme. Yes, our access to the real people behind the controversy amplifies our shameful relationship with the images. But presumably in an effort to entertain a mainstream audience, Morris makes choices that distract from and confuse this relationship. The documentary has a weirdly cinematic score by Danny Elfman, which sounds, as you might expect, like it was ripped from a Tim Burton movie. The interviews are intercut with both the photographs in question and, more frequently, slow-motion reenactments that are almost funny in their melodrama; they resemble fiction more than they resemble documentary. They read as cheap and disingenuous, particularly because they are in such close proximity to images that are “real” and evidential. These choices distract, probably purposefully, from the authenticity of the original images and their undeniable “verisimilitude, that is, shock” (38). I’m not sure how successful this strategy is in alleviating the audience’s discomfort, since all it produces is disbelief and distrust in the filmmaker. The film’s failure to present itself as wholly “authentic” relates to Sontag’s contention that “[for] the photography of atrocity, people want the weight of witnessing without the taint of artistry, which is equated with insincerity or mere contrivance” (26).
Finally, I think it is significant that the documentary’s two main interview subjects are female. The women interviewed were prison guards and perpetrators of violence and humiliation against their prisoners, complicating, but not entirely disproving, the idea that “war is a man’s game, that the killing machine has a gender, and it is male” (6). These women’s stories are very much about their experiences as women in the chauvinistic culture of the U.S. army. They illustrate the documentary’s larger point-- that people will rationalize in whatever way they can the horrors in which they participate. Still, the women explicitly draw connections between the dominant masculinity of army culture and their own wrongdoing. They suggest that their wrongdoing is a result of the “masculinizing" effects of the military’s specific biases and pressures.
I’ve gone on too long, but I think Abu Ghraib, and the simultaneously notable and mundane presence of women in those photographs, are fascinating things to consider in light of this book, particularly because it was published in 2003. It’s also interesting to consider that the original “shock” of the Abu Ghraib photographs has largely faded (and did not have much of an impact in conduct or policy). This is true to Sontag’s doubts regarding the power of shocking photographs to “unite people of good will," especially because these horrific images are nearly cliches.
wanted to add that Sontag did address Abu Ghraib in an article "Regarding the Torture of Others": http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/regarding-the-torture-of-others.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
ReplyDeleteall this seems particularly topical in light of the recently leaked photographs of American soldiers posing with the dismembered remains of Taliban fighters. horrorism indeed: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/world/asia/us-condemns-photo-of-soldiers-posing-with-body-parts.html