[Nettime-bold] A Kind Of Prayer

[Richard Evans <rje@well.com>]

A Kind Of Prayer

Written September 19, 2001.

by Richard Evans

May you die a thousand deaths runs the proverb, and so they have, those
victims of the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks, their deaths replayed
a thousand times on television, featured a thousand times on magazine
covers and in newspapers, images which have now been collated into a
distinct set, repeated. The news value of such images has long been expired
as has the aspect of surprise, of instant shock and outrage: it is also
reasonable to assume that everyone with television access has now seen
footage of the fall of the Twin Towers more than once. But still those
images are repeated every time the attacks are mentioned, even when the
news story in question is about the traumatic effects of watching such
images, especially in terms of the impact upon children, something I have
now witnessed on more than one network on more than one occasion and which
seems to reflect broader conventions regarding media treatments of tragedy
rather than a response to the recent terrorist attacks per se. Something
bereft of respect and dignity- or so it seems to me, when watching an
interview with an Adelaide man about the death of his twin brother who was
on the one hundred and third floor of the north tower of the World Trade
Centre when the first plane hit, the news image cutting from a shot of the
talking brother to the collapsing towers. And it was all too easy to
imagine that twin brother, running up to the World Trade Centre roof,
running through smoke and debris and the screams of fellow workers: it is
all too easy to imagine such things without needing to watch the footage as
well. The only reason that I can think of to show such footage in such a
context is because that is how such news stories are treated: if someone is
talking about a specific event and there is footage of that event then you
show the footage irrespective of context. But just once it would be
wonderful to see an interview which is just that, an interview with a
person rather than a pretext to show yet another angle of yet another
tragedy and part of the difficulty I've faced in trying to come to terms
with such televised tragedies is trying to create a sense of personal
space, a sense of balance between the image and the response, between
information and empowerment, between what I have seen and what I can do.
Which is  not very much in the current case in terms of either preventing
the recurrence of such terrorist acts or shaping the eventual response,
which will almost definitely include some televised aspect providing yet
another pretext to show the demise of certain buildings and this is not an
anti-media rant but a plea for dignity and space and the attempt to
distinguish between the necessary and the gratuitous. If there is anything
I do not need to see ever again it is footage of all of those people in all
those buildings, dying. And while the actual footage may very well show a
building collapse what is also being shown is the death of an estimated
five thousand people: our spectacle is their grave. 

copyright Richard Evans 2001
______
Echoes: Words and Images By Richard Evans: http://www.well.com/user/rje/


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