Tuesday, September 14, 2004
I wondered how long it would take our illustrious media to take the news of 1000 war dead and somehow turn it on its head as a device to undermine the cause in which these brave men and women died. Not long, it turns out. I had imagined some anti-Bush group would take out a full-paged add with 1000 coffins on it, tacking on some anti-war message by rote. Silly me, they did not need to pay for the space. The Boston Globe was kind enough to donate Op-Ed space for the message.
Boston.com: A thousand lives by Thomas Starr
While it is a fitting memorial to see these Americans as they were, the portraits contradict the concept of death. Viewers are reminded more of a page from a yearbook than the documentation of a tragedy.
In Colonial Massachusetts, photographic portraits were not an option, but war deaths were still reported visually: with the simple silhouette of a coffin for each casualty.
Captions identified the otherwise identical images. Visually, it was less personal but in content it was more to the point. This tradition continued into the 20th century with photographs of flag-draped coffins returning to American soil. In the war in Iraq, however, such images have been censored.
Today, when confronted with photographs of 1,000 casualties in Iraq, we don't question why we are shown vitality when the words indicate the opposite. We understand -- on an intellectual level. But on an emotional level -- the level on which images operate -- the pictures cancel out the words.
Perhaps this is why photojournalists are no longer allowed to depict the coffins of our returning war dead. Faces belie coffins.
Thomas Starr is associate professor of graphic design at Northeastern University.
You can see the accompanying graphic at the link above.
Leaving aside the falsehood that photojournalists are not allowed to depict coffins (It's not against the law, they're simply disallowed from taking photos of the coffins coming off the planes. Want a picture of a flag-draped coffin? Go visit a funeral and see how the family feels about it.) Starr seems actually dismayed that today, the papers print the real pictures of the dead - images of them while they were still living. It would seem odd at first that an art professor known for organizing anti-war exhibits would actually be dismayed that the faces of the real people who fought and died would be shown in lieu of generic coffins. Wouldn't the actual photo be more effective to bring the cost of war home? Of course. But then perhaps we'd be forced to confront the individual and their sacrifice. We may end up feeling a bit guilty not doing everything we could to make sure their efforts were successful and that they did not die in vain. Or worse, we may feel a pang of guilt actually working against them and helping to ensure a vain death.
Besides, generic images fit a generic message far more easily.
Let us not be coy. Starr's anti-war message is a generic one that started before the conflict and has remained unencumbered by the images of mass-graves, children's prisons, cut off tongues and hands and gassed villages. It is unencumbered by the specific images of the young Americans who have given their lives in the cause of freedom and to crack open one of the worst destabilizing regimes in the Middle East so that we might be safer here at home.
These coffins are not an attempt to honor their sacrifice, they are an attempt to convey a feeling of shame, and a generic one at that. I feel none, nor should you.
Let us again be honest. The text that accompanies the picture is a meaningless tack-on included as the merest excuse to try to justify what is, in fact, a boring and obvious work that any non-artist could as easily have dreamed up and created. The text is senseless because that's what happens when you try to write and hide your cards at the same time. It's dishonest because the author won't come right out and say what his agenda really is. Worry not. We've puzzled it.
Starr: "In Colonial Massachusetts, photographic portraits were not an option, but war deaths were still reported visually: with the simple silhouette of a coffin for each casualty."
Here is the type of image he's talking about:
That image is typical of a type of sheet printed immediately in the aftermath of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. They were conveyed by fast courier all up and down the Atlantic coast to each colony one by one. The coffins depicted the dead of the battle, and the number grew in subsequent printings as more men died of their wounds.
Far from being distributed to instill a sense of shame and inculcate a feeling of hopeless paralysis, these propaganda posters inflamed the public. They were the ear-splitting ring that made the shot heard 'round the world what it was. They fomented the Revolution. They were a brush fire that General Gage and the rest were unable to put out.
Those coffins said to the people, "Look! Look what they've done! Our people are dead and murdered, now what are you going to do about it?" As Churchill would say a century and a half later, "What kind of people do they think we are?"
Starr's illustration, and the Boston Globe's printing of it are a very different type of propaganda - but of the type one might expect to find in a foreign paper, not one here at home.
I have a question, then: By showing us these images, what kind of people do Thomas Starr and the Boston Globe think we are?
