CNN's web site today Sunday 14.10.01

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The photo essay by Alexandra Boulat on today's CNN web site is a remarkable
piece.  It is anchored by the title "Pakistan's Wild West".  It consists of
some 14 photos published in Time on Quetta, a Taliban stronghold in
Northern Pakistan.  The term 'anchoring' is meant to describe the process
by which the printed word is added to the photograph in order to stabilise
its meaning.

I cannot be absolutely sure what meanings the phrase "Wild West" makes for
American readers but for me it speaks of chaos and the break down of law
and order and the need for a sheriff with true grit to impose the rule of
law by bringing summary justice to the offenders.  It is in keeping of
course with Bush's notorious statement about Osama - namely "Wanted Dead or
Alive".  It all speaks so much to me of John Wayne's last film _The
Shootist_ when he explains his life of violence by saying that he lives by
a personal moral code.  This is "I will not be laid a hand upon..., I do
not do these things to other men and I will not allow them to be done to me."


The photoessay as a whole builds up a picture of human misery - beggars,
Muslim leaders and heroin addicts smoking under the bridge.

Of course the images are de-totalised.  There is no way that we can see the
link between this flood of misery and the years of US Foreign Policy.  No
where are there the finger prints on Zbigniew Brezinski, who first directed
USA involvement in Afghanistan.

But it is only a dialectical analysis which would insist that we put the
photos into their *true* context and not that of the  "wild west" which is
drawn from the imaginary of USA popular culture.

Moreover it is the dialectic which resists reading these photos as another
despair making  instance of the meaningless multiplicity of contemporary
life. The postmodernists have resisted the dialectic of course and insisted
on the liberatory potential of multiplicity.

Photographs like Boulat's expose the hollowness of the claim that
undialectical thinking is liberatory.  They and the rest of the site all
add up to the classic feeling that this is human chaos out there on the
horizon.  It is totally without context and is incapable of address.  We
might as well bomb it. We cannot make anything worse anyway.

For me Boulat's essay and the whole CNN web site today all add up to the
classic feeling that this is human chaos out there somewhere
incomprehensible in terms of time and space.  It is totally without context
and is incapable of address. We have had no part in causing it, but on Sept
11 they came and bombed us. We might as well bomb them. We cannot make
anything worse anyway.


If we get this urge CNN. kind supply us with a gallery of photos of the
bombing raids.  These are arranged neatly in a before and aqfter
sequence.  We see the rargets before and then we click onto the after and
see that they are all destroyed.  How surgical how neat, thank god for
smart bombs.  The contrast between the order that these photos claim and
the chaos Boulat's photos document could not be greater.

However the site is relying on the absence of historical memory.  We have
seen photos like these before.  The Gulf War began the myth of the New
Media bombing raid. The New Economy's contribution to America's unending
crusade for global justice.  But once again there is an historical
truth.  Only a tiny percentage of Gulf War Bombs were "smart".   Death
rained from the skies in very much the same way as it did long before the
.com bubble.


However if we resist what I feel is the dominant meaning, which the site
strives to get across, and look just at the photos then another picture
emerges. The second photograph strikes me as particularly remarkable. The
anchoring message says


"Afghan refugees escorted by Pakistani police officers are trucked from a
temporary detention center in Quetta.  Refugees are flooding into the
border town to evade anticipated fighting in
Afghanistan."


If however, as I have urged, we ignore the constellational anchorage of the
phrase "Wild West" and the specific anchoring for this photo and let it
speak to us by itself then alternative meanings begin to .emerge.  The
photo is dominated by the hand that the young man has stretched out towards
us from behind the bars.  However gradually our eye takes in the figure
beside him.  It is presumably a woman covered over with the total veil.  We
cannot see even her eyes.  Her hand though is stretched out in
supplication.  She too like the young man seeks something from us.

What can it be?  Infinite justice perhaps or maybe just enduring freedom?

regards

Gary


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