A Critical Discussion of some of the Main Shifts That Have Occurred in Relation to Visual Representation in the Wake of the Events of 9/11 and the Subsequent ‘War on Terror’

Essay , 2010 , 11 Pages , Grade: 61

Art - Photography and Film

The events of 9/11 shocked people all over the world and as a political consequence the ‘war on terror’ was established. A ‘public trauma’ emerged after the unexpected attacks because they made clear how near the unknown but also continuing threat of terrorism is. An extraordinary situation took place when people world wide felt shocked and directly targeted by the attacks.
The exploding demand on visual media which dealt with the issue was the expression of a new function in the wake of the events: Visual representation had to assume the responsibility of substituting for the essential act of ‘bearing witness’ to help the public with handling trauma and grief (Zelizer, 2002).
Fighting a war against an unknown enemy – ‘the terror’ or ‘the evil’ – was a historically unprecedented situation. People were frightened and many wanted to find somebody to blame for the attacks to feel safe again; the reaction of the government to attack Afghanistan found support although the justification for the attacks would be proven wrong later. But the dimension of cruelty of this war and in the American prison Abu Ghraib towards alleged terrorists caused another public shock after the limited imagery was published.
Together, these two events and their subsequent public traumas caused two very contrasting consecutive world wide moods towards the US government.
In retrospect the events are said to mark a change within visual representation, particularly the representation of trauma.
One of the main shifts in visual representation in the wake of these crises was that the focus moved towards the public. ”This was curious, for among photojournalists the idea of using images to draw from and upon the public rather than to depict the events being witnessed was antithetical to what good journalism is supposed to do” (Zelizer, 2002, p.48).

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• The events of 9/11 shocked people all over the world and as a political consequence the 'war on terror was established
• Fighting a war against an unknown enemy — 'the terror' or 'the evil' — was a historically unprecedented situation
• In retrospect the events are said to mark a change within visual representation, particularly the representation of trauma
• However, the flood of indirectly associated imagery in press and television after the attacks was also a consequence of the limited availability of directly related photographs
• The focus on the public and the personal experiences of trauma were also expressed in theatre performances
• Another shift is the lack of newsworthiness in press pictures and television news that were related to the events of 9/11 and the Abu Ghraib prison
• Regarding these examples, it seems that "one of the central ways in which contemporary trauma has been conceived is around the symptom of the intrusive or recurrent image reimmerses you in the visual field of the inaugurating traumatic instant (Luckhursti 2008, p. 147) and which lacks of newsworthiness
• A further main shift in relation to visual representation is the abandonment of direct depictions of bodies
• Altogether the visual representation of trauma was changed by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent 'war on terror'
• Bibliography
• Online images

Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte

This paper critically discusses some of the main shifts that have occurred in relation to visual representation in the wake of the events of 9/11 and the subsequent 'War on Terror'. It examines how these events have impacted the ways in which trauma is visually represented, particularly in the context of photojournalism, theatre, and film.

• The role of visual media in mediating public trauma and grief
• The shift from direct depictions of events to a focus on public reactions and personal experiences of trauma
• The rise of iconic imagery and the lack of newsworthiness in repeated images
• The avoidance of direct depictions of bodies and the sensitivity surrounding images of victims
• The impact of these shifts on the public's understanding of the events and their political consequences

Zusammenfassung der Kapitel

The events of 9/11 shocked people all over the world and as a political consequence the 'war on terror' was established. A 'public trauma' emerged after the unexpected attacks because they made clear how near the unknown but also continuing threat of terrorism is. An extraordinary situation took place when people world wide felt shocked and directly targeted by the attacks.

The exploding demand on visual media which dealt with the issue was the expression of a new function in the wake of the events: Visual representation had to assume the responsibility of substituting for the essential act of 'bearing witness' to help the public with handling trauma and grief (Zelizer, 2002).

Fighting a war against an unknown enemy — 'the terror' or 'the evil' — was a historically unprecedented situation. People were frightened and many wanted to find somebody to blame for the attacks to feel safe again; the reaction of the government to attack Afghanistan found support although the justification for the attacks would be proven wrong later. But the dimension of cruelty of this war and in the American prison Abu Ghraib towards alleged terrorists caused another public shock after the limited imagery was published.

Together, these two events and their subsequent public traumas caused two very contrasting consecutive world wide moods towards the US government.

One of the main shifts in visual representation in the wake of these crises was that the focus moved towards the public. "This was curious, for among photojournalists the idea of using images to draw from and upon the public rather than to depict the events being witnessed was antithetical to what good journalism is supposed to do" (Zelizer, 2002, p.48).

After 9/11 newspapers depicted people looking at outrages, which in turn were not shown (Fig.l), like the attack itself or the site afterwards. Even pictures of people visiting photographic exhibitions which published amateur photos of the events were used. "In sum journalism itself loosened its adherence to usual norms of newsgathering and presentation to frame the act of seeing as an integral part of coverage" (Zelizer, 2002, p. 57). Also, a lot of related imagery was prevalent, for example portraits of victims like the 'Portraits of Grief in the New York Times, visual comparisons with other traumata, like the one at Pearl Harbour, or comparisons of the area before and after the attacks which helped realising the change of the cityscape (Zelizer, 2002).

However, the flood of indirectly associated imagery in press and television after the attacks was also a consequence of the limited availability of directly related photographs: There were only 102 minutes between the crash of the first plane and the collapse of the second tower. This didn't provide the possibility of the same range of images like commonly observed in situations with a comparable political and sociological effect, for instance a war that lasts a few years.

Despite that, "these categories of depiction created a space for shaping public response to the events of 9/11 that had little to do with the aims and goals of journalism in non-crisis times" (Zelizer, 2002, p. 64). Concentrating on people's dramatic reactions to the attacks mobilised public support for the political plans of the government, because people feel safe again by agreeing on "compensatory action" (Zelizer, 2002) and uniting against an enemy. The reason for this is that recovering from public trauma needs "establishing safety" as a first stage according to Barbie Zelizer (2002, p.49). Without this the subsequent grieving process cannot work (Zelizer, 2002).

These coherences could even make the horror of the attacks seem purposefully "spectacularised" (Govan, 2005) for political reasons.

The focus on the public and the personal experiences of trauma were also expressed in theatre performances. The audience is included as an intrinsic part of the performance in works like "Happiness" (2002) of Laurie Anderson, which deals with the 9/11 subject matter, and "My Neck is Thinner than a Hair" (2004) of Walid Raad, which is about terrorist acts in the Lebanese wars. The artists incorporate the spectators' personal experiences in many different ways: The viewer is given the possibility to work on his own trauma by discussions, responding to the performance or thinking of his personal 9/11 experience at the most important moments of the performance, which are left empty for this purpose (Govan, 2005).

Also in Alejandro Inárritu's contribution to the project "11' 09" 01 " of Alain Brigand not the event itself but the people's most traumatic experiences take centre stage. He uses, for example, the sound of bodies hitting the pavement after jumping out of the windows of the burning World Trade Center. This was described by witnesses as the most unforgettable aspect of the event (Fitzpatrick, 2007).

Another shift is the lack of newsworthiness in press pictures and television news that were related to the events of 9/11 and the Abu Ghraib prison. Certain images and sequences were repeated so often by most of the newspapers or stations that they turned into icons.

Especially the burning Twin Towers of the World Trade Center the sequence of the first crash and the "Hooded Man" in the Abu Ghraib prison are now symbolic for their related traumata.

"The day after the attacks, 85% of the front pages displayed shots of the burning towers. They functioned like 'a kind of wallpaper' " and were shown in diverse perspectives, notes Barbie Zelizer (2002, p. 58) (Fig. 2). After the events the blazing building was used as a logo by the Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers, often quite graphic versions could be seen. The World Trade Center very quickly turned into the symbol for the horror of 9/11 (Zelizer, 2002).

Also television couldn't provide more newsworthy footage and met the public demand of bearing witness to treat the trauma by broadcasting "an endless loop of returns of the actual attack" (Zelizer, 2002, p. 50). Edgar and Sedgwick note that analogue to newspapers, "constant repetition in the form of global news broadcasts and subsequently in documentaries and other programmes, helped create an indelible symbolism" (2008, p. 227).

Torture in the Abu Ghraib prison is mostly represented by two recurring pictures, which therefore lack newsworthiness: the 'Hooded Man" (Fig. 3) who stands on a box with spread arms holding wires for electric shocks, and a warden leading a half naked prisoner on a leash (Mitchell, 2006).

According to Roger Luckhurst, the depiction of the man on the box "has become a condensation of this [the abuse in Abu Ghraib] atrocity" (2008, p. 175). W.J.T. Mitchell even compares the strength of the images iconic character to the one of the Nike Swoosh or the McDonald's Golden Arches. "This figure has now become instantly recognizable throughout the world, appearing as the central image in news reports, political protests, and cartoon strips", it became "a symbol of a global conflict" (Mitchell, 2006, p. 18) and was even transformed, like the photograph of the prisoner on the leash, into a political illustration based on the look of iPod advertisements (Fig. 4).

Regarding these examples, it seems that "one of the central ways in which contemporary trauma has been conceived is around the symptom of the intrusive or recurrent image reimmerses you in the visual field of the inaugurating traumatic instant (Luckhurst, 2008, p. 147) and which lacks of newsworthiness.

The reuse of the same images in the visual coverage of the two traumata has several reasons: Visual records of both situations are limited. The torture in Abu Ghraib's prison is documented only by unofficial snapshots of the US military staff. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 didn't even provide two hours to visually register the situations. Regarding the latter, the press countered this fact by the discussed use of related imagery of the public. The ban of taking pictures of Ground Zero and its closure to the public for the first weeks after the attacks nourished the demand on all kinds of associated photographs (Zelizer, 2002). For these reasons, pictures had to substitute for reality to an unusual degree, Edgar and Sedgwick (2008) even note that "the distinction between the sign and its referent, the real world, collapses" (p. 202) in today's mass media world.

A further main shift in relation to visual representation is the abandonment of direct depictions of bodies. This has contrasting political and sociological reasons for the images of the events of 9/11 in comparison to the ones of the 'war on terror'.

Commonly society is fascinated with death as a spectacle (Baer, 2002). Foster argues that the common attitude towards reports is that 'truth resides in the diseased or damaged body" (cited in Luckhurst, 2008, p.151). Edgar and Sedgwick note that in today's society "nothing is taboo any more" (2008, p. 151). People don't hesitate to look at press depictions of death in a different context, like wars or famines in countries far away.

Barbie Zelizer states that the template for the visual coverage of the events of 9/11 resembles the one that was used for the reports about the liberation of the concentration camps in World War II. There are many parallels like the constant repetition of the same images over several weeks after these events or the focus on pictures rather than text.

However, an important difference is the explicit depiction of death in 1945. The statement that there was "no need 'to see' the bodies in the later event [2001], for the structural similarities in presentation called to memory the corpses of earlier times [1945]" (Zelizer, 2002, p.65) seems overstated.

The reason is a different one: The public didn't want to see depictions of this kind in the case of the attacks of 9/11 because of the new context of the situation. "For the US, this is the first time since the war of 1812 that the national territory has been under attack, or even that is a dramatic change" (Chomsky, 2002).

Today societies refuse the presence of the threat in their midst (Baer, 2002) but are now confronted with the unarguable death of people living in the same city or country. There is the possibility to recognise a dead person (Fitzpatrick, 2007) and also the imagination of being a victim oneself is very obvious (Govan, 2005). This unprecedented proximity caused an extraordinary sensitivity towards photographs of victims of the attacks. Furthermore the pictures of victims go even further by turning into a proof of the general human state (Luckhurst, 2008). The deciding reason could be that, in comparison to 1945, this threat is still ongoing.

Therefore the first step of recovering from a trauma — the reconstruction of safety — is much easier without directly facing the threat of death (Zelizer, 2002).

The most direct depictions of dying were the 'Jumpers' - workers who leaped from the towers to escape the fire. Especially the picture taken by Richard Drew (Fig. 5) was published relatively often for it displays an extraordinary aesthetic and hides the vulnerability and panic in the situation. And even this image was compared to the most horrible press pictures ever showing death like the execution of a Vietcong (Zelizer, 2002).

Attempts to work with these images in fine art, for instance the sculpture "Tumbling Woman" (2001-2) by Eric Fischl or the photographic composition "Terminal Velocity" (2001) by Carolee Schneemann (Fig. 6), caused extremely negative reactions by the public (Fitzpatrick, 2007).

The depiction of the death in images of the prison in Abu Ghraib was also tried to be avoided; the most shocking pictures weren't published often. The public was traumatised by the cruelty of the military reaction to the events of 9/11 and many people felt guilty for their support of the actions. The consequence was a definite change of the political mood after the publication.

Schlüsselwörter

Die Schlüsselwörter und Schwerpunktthemen des Textes umfassen die Ereignisse des 11. September 2001, den "Krieg gegen den Terror", die visuelle Repräsentation von Trauma, die Rolle der Medien in der Krisenkommunikation, die Sensibilität gegenüber Bildern von Opfern, die Ikonisierung von Bildern und die Veränderungen in der Bildsprache nach dem 11. September. Der Text analysiert, wie die Ereignisse des 11. September die visuelle Repräsentation von Trauma beeinflusst haben und welche Auswirkungen dies auf die öffentliche Meinung und die politische Landschaft hatte.

• College: University of Westminster (Media, Arts and Design)
• Course: Photography and Visual Culture
• Grade: 61
• Author: Sarah Doerfel (Author)
• Publication Year: 2010
• Pages: 11
• Catalog Number: V208528
• ISBN (eBook): 9783656368168
• ISBN (Book): 9783656368397
• Language: English
• Tags: Abu Ghraib, 9/11, September 11, September 2001, terrorist, New York, World Trade Centre, Twin Towers, suicide attack, falling man, war on terror, trauma, public grief, shock, afghanistan war, hooded man, alejandro innaritu, icon, media, mass media, television, news coverage, foreign politics, visual culture, eric fischl, carolee schneemann, photography, documentary photography, bearing witness