I have been thinking about images some of which we saw here … of Atari Express, the Chief Justice fiasco and now Nandigram. In particular, I am thinking of the two videos posted on the site- that of the lawyers in Pakistan and the villagers in Nandigram being lathi charged. Images of police brutality have been telecast in the last few years (meerut couples,gurgaon factory workers etc.) and yet more images seem to be waiting to be born, images of khaki wielding lathi.
These images seem to be multiplying… but what secret do they reveal? Has people’s resistance grown stronger? Or just more visible? Or have the police become more brutal? Or is it just that the combination of old and new media has allowed a certain representation to take shape? Or If we were to take those theories about the (bad) effects of TV seriously (for example, studies about the rising criminality in under 16s as an effect of sex and violence on TV), the policemen have been watching too much TV (perhaps even themselves on TV)!
On a more serious note- isn’t the entire premise of the media that seeing/revealing something is equal to doing/acting? If you see police brutality, the very act of watching it (insaaf aur sach ki awaaz aapko miltee rahegee- (we will carry on bringing to you the voice of justice and truth) as the Geo TV anchor said when the offices of Geo were being
attacked and broadcast live on TV) is an intervention on the part of the viewer. How do we relate to an event which reaches us through the media and what implications does it
have for politics? What implications does “seeing” an event through and in the media have
to “doing” ? Or is the act of bearing witness and registering rage itself a political intervention?
New media has engendered new modes of participation. And it is hoped, new modes of intervention. It is often celebrated on the grounds that it enables a seamless circulation and thereby participation. Or is this sense of participation just an illusion of intervention, a new opiate of the masses? The knowledge of an event seems itself an act
of intervention. Seeing is not just believing but also acting.
On a different note. Why do certain images have a greater impact than others? Why are certain images always framed the same way?’ What for instance does the recurring image of khaki brutality tell us? Does this image carry a certain political resonance for us?
I can think of countless black and white photographs from the 1980s where the same image appears as a testimony to the violence of the times. The lathi charge is also after all an iconic image of India’s freedom struggle (and the “political”) preserved by the media for us. The train is yet another- though a far more tragic- image.
At the time of the Atari incident, a friend Hasan Mujtaba wrote an article about how trains and communal violence are intrinsically linked in South Asian psyches. From Partition
to Godhra, or Bombay train blasts to Atari. Why do certain images recur? Or perhaps it is the events which recur? The news practitioners on this site should tell us about how
these things unfold in the newsrooms. How do reporters frame these images? And what are the “effects” (imagined or otherwise) of a wider circulation of images? “We couldn’t see these images before, we can now” … to what effect or act? So when somebody reading
one of the articles on Nandigram wrote in saying”appreciate the article but where is the solution” we can only respond with “ Dekhtey Raheeye” (Keep watching/ Stay tuned)…
Quoting from your piece Meenu “…the knowledge of an event seems itself an act of intervention. Seeing is not just believing but also acting…†I would say absolutely. Just watching the violent images and messages on 24 hour news channels (followed by a truncated discussion on it) helps redeem us of our societal inertia; and by default places us on a pedestal higher than those spending time watching the ‘saas-bahu’ soaps (the endless mom-in-law/daughter-in-law love-hate sagas). An extremely incisive piece; throws up really interesting thoughts.
Your post does throw up very interesting questions, but I would disagree with dg’s assessment that seeing difficult images puts us on a higher pedestal than the viewers of saas-bahu soaps. This idea does bring into sharp relief a question I have been struggling with, that you suggest in your post. What happens in the act of viewing news?
When does it matter for people to see these images? To what particular end? Is there an end?
If we raise the moral flag and say that it is in some way, just politically “good” for us, for our souls and our conscience, that it, then, as a good atheist I have to cite complete religious discrimination. I do not accept the inherent moral value of viewing violence. But still, I find myself looking, wondering why I am looking.
I must agree with Unheimlich Maneuver. There is something very Platonic about this talk about the immediacy and transparency of the new media YouTube generation 24×7 visibility / action. It assumes that what we, in fact, are seeing is a glimpse of the “real” behind the transparent “representations” that then, as a consequence, forces us to act. But what gives the image its enunciative authority, would be the first obvious question to ask before some joyful celebration of transparency of wordly evil.
In my Nietzschean Amor Fati here, what happens when 3D anim gets to the level of realism so any event can be manufactured as they do now in Hollywood props? Already the lexicon of realism today MUST include shaky cameras and mobile phone footage imitations often post-produced through clever use of editing techniques just give the impression of transparency. Which, again, has its grammatical roots perhaps in Cinema Verite or Neo-realism …
So, if something that we should learn from the contemporary media landscape is the complexity of the division between fact and fiction. Following Meenu, I agree that the question we should therefore ask is not whether an image is true or not; rather, what is the event of its return, its repetition, that we see today in the examples that are mentioned.
Hi Somnath,
Im another ‘esteemed’ member of the Indian mainstream media. Im doing a story on websites like yours which disseminate information on such soci-economic issues to wider audiences…it would be great if you could give some reaction on how deeply the Bengali expats have reacted to the events in Nandigram and Singur…in terms of any protest march or rally that is..
Would really appreciate your help..so please do try n mail me back at the address given above..
Thanks