9:13 am (PDT) Thursday, May 13, 2004

The Power of Image - The Photos from Abu Ghraib

Fed up with my cable company, I cancelled my service and decided to take a break from TV for a while before I went out and bought a satellite dish. This was a risky decision for a "communications specialist" who is often called upon by the media to comment on political speeches and images but one I was looking forward to exploring. My newspaper subscription had run out but I still had my radio and was eager to return to the golden age of broadcast journalism where I would learn about the day's events unbiased by the sensationalism and crassness of video images.

I couldn't have picked a more significant month to perform this experiment. Not a week after I "unplugged", the images from Abu Ghraib began flooding the airwaves. I heard about these images, of course, described by the considerate folk at NPR in graphic detail. I listened to every word of the Congressional hearings. I was, I thought, as fully aware of the abuses as any American who had TV and was just as shocked and appalled.

Then my copy of The Economist arrived in the mail. Staring at me from the cover was an Iraqi prisoner, balancing precariously on a box in front of what looked like a blood stained wall, "dressed" in a ragged cloak and pointed hood, arms stretched out resembling nothing so much as a man being crucified, with wires attached to his hands rather than nails.

Thoroughly shaken, I scoured the web for the other images, images I had heard described numerous times but images that once seen were more searing than I could have ever imagined.

The impact of these images should not have come as a surprise to me. When I was a student of rhetoric, I was fascinated by the Kennedy-Nixon debates, one of the first examples of the power of television. I knew that people who listened to the radio broadcast thought Nixon won the debate but those who watched it on television were captivated by Kennedy's tan and decided in his favor.

I know that images have tremendous influence in human cognitive processes. So why was I so shocked? What is it about images, these images? Is it the fact that we are prudish and intensely uncomfortable with nudity? That the hoods worn by the prisoners are eerily reminiscent of KKK uniforms? Are we still so unsettled about the role of women in the military that this incontrovertible confrontation with their involvement is too much to bear?

My experiment has led me to conclude that at its heart, our efforts at intellectualization are impossible in the face of the visceral response elicited by images. Even as we marveled at, for example, radio pioneer Edward R. Murrow's descriptions of the bombing of Britain, words alone still allowed each of us to project what we wanted onto the reality. While the horror of the event was obvious, we were still able, in the absence of images, to soften the event in our mind so that it didn't threaten our notions of human decency, didn't smash through our struggle to deny "man's inhumanity to man."

My experiment has demonstrated that the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" is at best an understatement, at worst, childish and naïve. It's why liberation forces during World War II insisted on filming the concentration camps. It's why a photograph of a naked girl running from a napalm attack affected public opinion on Vietnam. It's why the Pentagon, ironic in light of these events, placed a blackout on pictures of the coffins of dead soldiers. And it's why the images from Abu Ghraib, more than any other aspect of this war, will impact all of us and forever influence how we remember this event.

Is this a good thing? Is the power of images so terrible we should bottle the genie? Should CBS have held the airing of these images knowing the horror they would elicit? I am ambivalent to say the least, but I do know that I am buying my satellite dish as soon as possible so that I can once again face reality, in all its graphic detail, political consequences and moral implications.

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