There is a false sense of legitimacy that is socially ingrained in the technologically produced image. Painting and sculpture are not considered by popular culture to display complete accuracy. We believe that photographers (and others who document an aspect of our world through imaging technology) reveal the truth to the viewer and do not have as heavy a hand in manipulating the scene portrayed or the emotional response of the viewer. While not every aspect of every photograph taken has been due to a deliberate intention of the photographer, photography and other imaging technologies are far from void of manipulation.
Valerie Hartouni argues in “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion” that “technologies themselves do not peer; they are instruments and relations that facilitate or obstruct, but above all construct ‘peering’…likewise ‘peering’ is not itself a benign, impartial, disinterested, or disembodied activity, but is both mediated and situated within interpretive frameworks, points of view, and sets of purposes” (Hartouri 211)
There is a strong connection between this concept and what Errol Morris argues in his film Standard Operating Procedure. The cameras which documented the acts of torture are not intelligent in that they do not understand what it is that they commit to visual history. The camera does not “peer” at the tortured Iraqi male however the camera is the instrument that facilitates our discussions surrounding the torture at Abu Ghraib as well as obstructs the various possible truths (reality?) at the prison. The way that the photographs are presented to the viewer by the documenter has a huge affect on how the viewer receives each image. As I discussed in a previous blogpost regarding Abu Ghraib, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris presents images to the viewer with a white frame against a black background evocative of a scrapbook (read: we are supposed to view these images as a routine part of our soldiers’ trip abroad). This scrapbook is the “interpretive framework” in which our peering takes place. We may peer at the photographs of the soldiers’ lifestyle and think how horrible those people were—but only because we, “mediated and situated” by the photographer (and in Standard Operating Procedure, the director) into a space where outrage and horror are the (perhaps the only) appropriate response.
Appropriate responses are elicited through interactions with imaging technology and the profound “truths” that they expose (and conceal). Hartouni articulates that at one point women who received abortions and did not experience regret or loss were viewed by popular culture as “callous, hard, selfish, capricious, or ‘unwomanly,’ but that this societal view shifted along with abortion discourse surrounding the more readily available technology of the ultrasound. In the late 1980s, women who didn’t have incredibly negative experiences with abortion were now considered to simply be “maternally illiterate or simply ignorant of fetal life.” The appropriate response of wanting to keep one’s baby was thought to be attainable through ultrasound imaging—a woman would see the fetus, recognize it as her legitimate preborn child and decide to not have the abortion. (Hartouni 206) The ultrasound machine does not have the ability to peer, but as with the pictures of Abu Ghraib, the viewer is mediated and situated towards a particular response—even guided step by step. I cannot read an ultrasound image—a doctor would have to tell me where the fetus’s head is—where the fetus’s foot is. I am mediated and situated by society to look at the image and claim it as a child—possibly my child. At every step, imaging technology is used to produce images that are read to the viewer through discursive frameworks surrounding the topic which we believe to be presented to us within the image…but this is not a pipe.
Hartouni, Valerie. “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion.” The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Eds Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: NYU Press, 1998. 171-97.
Standard Operating Procedure. Dir. Errol Morris, 2008
Also, this reminded me off the discussion we were having in class regarding how women are supposed to just want to be mothers. Enjoy!
I must say, I loved that video. Perhaps I don't like pregnant women because I agree with them! :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think that your post brings up some good points. Think of any film where the happy soon-to-be parents are having an ultrasound. The dad often says something like "Is that the penis?!" while pointing to the fetus's arm. The sonographer points out that the image is their baby, rather than calling it a fetus.
The discussion makes me think of the movie Juno. I found the movie fascinating for various reasons, but the biggest was that, though Juno decided to keep the baby, she by no means wanted to be a mother. She referred to it is "the thing" often, and didn't want to know anything about it. For this reason, the viewer could not even imagine her being a mother, though she carried a life inside her. Very interesting.