Erol Morris's film Standard Operating Procedure was a series of snapshots into a world of self-incriminating surveillance. Just as the set of these military police perform for their digital cameras at Abu Ghraib, they perform for Morris, allowing themselves to tread the boards for yet another lens.
I believe that Morris aims to paint us an idealized picture of Abu Ghraib. The antagonist of the film Lynndie England appears not in the soft lighting of a Barbra Walters interview, but in a cold, dark light which shows her as some kind of evil even before she opens her mouth. This is not a warm environment, not even warmth you feel from a tape recorder interview (which is not warm at all), but a Clarice/Lector rapport.
Is this considered public surveillance? Yes, an on-T.V. or movie interview are types of censored public surviellance (the filmmakers being the censor), the interviewees are the surveilled, and are totally aware of it. The difference between this film and the self-surveillance the MP's took on through their digital snapshots could come down to the lack of smiles and thumbs up in Morris's film.
Their interviews are only subsidiaries to their photos, maybe more quasi-vignettes to be typed in italics on museum board and posted underneath their matted digital prints, surveillance on display. How very so Well Live in Public/Josh Harris of them.
Josh Harris chose self-surveillance on his own accord, as did the MP's of Abu Ghraib, and both were doing it to prove a point, to show something. Instead of righting an autobiography or researching and writing a Bob Woodward-like article, we now default to the image. The power of the image and more-so the power of the film (complete with Hollywood magic and dissonant music) are relaying messages to the greater public at a speed far greater than the written word. While some argue that we are de-sensitized to "heavy" images, like the ones taken at Abu Ghraib, filmmakers like Morris and Harris continue to take them to the next level. Morris's reenactments, subjectivity and mere camera technology enhance the power of the image. I could enhance the contrast, take down the exposure and add a sickly, green tint, and make any image appear a bit more sinister.
The first posted picture is the famed prisoner pyramid, complete with two military police in the background giving us an Ovaltine smile and Uncle Sam's thumbs up. The second picture is a mass grave from the Holocaust. Differences? Similarities? Yes, I know that this is a stark contrast, different context, difference scales, but both of these images are strong, heavy and disturbing. Forced piles of bodies, captured on film, naked and helpless.
In this post you make a somewhat lighthearted comparison between the interviews in "Standard Operating Procedure" and the "We Live in Public" project. But do you really think that they are equatable? The basis for Josh Harris's project was that people want their fifteen minutes of fame everyday; he wanted to make that a reality for people. The soldiers interviewed in "Standard Operating Procedures" took pictures for the sake of documentation. However twisted the photographs may seem and however complicated the reasons for taking these pictures were, do you think that the intent behind these forms of surveillance are the same?
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Cait's comment. The surveillance in "We Live in Public" was entirely sanctioned by the participants and they were at all times aware that their actions were going to be being broadcast or at the very least recorded. The photographs from Abu Ghraib may or may not have been for documentation, from the interviews it is difficult to tell what is true. However, the individuals taking the pictures intended to release the pictures on their own terms, not have them twisted as evidence against them. I would agree that in both cases there was indeed incrimination associated with the surveillance, but the two situations don't equate on the level of awareness and consent of those in the images.
ReplyDeleteJust commenting on the photo's alone, I felt like you made a really interesting comparrison. Viewing this film in class I seen this prison as a modern day concentration camp myself. There are few differences between the Holocaust and Abu, that we know of. As far as we know, how do we know if American soldiers were not taking a group of them in a chamber and killing them all with gas? All we know is what we see, and that alone is horrifying.
ReplyDeleteContrasting the image of bodies from the Holocaust and the "construction" designed by the soldiers at Abu Graib points out the strange spiral of actions being influenced by pictures and certainly makes us wonder how the presence of the camera in the 21st century pushed the soldiers to "perform" for the camera in the age of shows like Jackass and Trailer Park Boys...
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