DeAnander on war, pornography, & war pornography

[sam]

The whole introduction and comments are well worth reading. Here are some excerpts:

Trophy Pictures

http://stangoff.com/?p=350#comments

Somehow despite recurring scandals about rape within the US military, the rapes committed against Iraqi women by occupying troops including the spectacularly wicked and brutal rape/murder of a teenager called Abir… the everpresent connection between military domination and sexual domination, military vindictiveness and sexual vindictiveness, militarised racism and militarised misogyny… the Librul Media just never manage to put 2 and 2 together. Trophy Videos from the theatre of operations are for them only metaphorically pornographic. The reality that much/most of contemporary commercial and amateur pornography is designed to humiliate its victims and to express themes of domination, ownership, vindictiveness, collective punishment, etc. perpetually escapes them.

**

Why, asked my colleague, why on earth, did they take pictures? "I mean, they’re doing this stuff and it’s horrible enough as it is," she wrote, "but by taking pictures they are just leaving evidence. Why do it, except that it adds to the sexualized thrill tobe making porno?"

This is a good question, deeply thought-provoking, deeply connected to the first troubling incident. This question applies across the board. Why did the Nazis take pictures and meticulously document the atrocities committed in the camps? Why did a generation of White Hunters take pictures of themselves standing on wild animals they had shot? Why do hunters hang trophy heads on their walls? Why did White people take pictures of lynchings and make them into postcards that were then collected, traded, etc.? Why did GIs in Viet Nam collect ears (and other more private body parts) from their victims? Why did "Indian fighters" and bounty hunters in the old West collect body parts from dead Indians? And — lastly — why do men make documentary pornography? Reverting to our first question again: why is one kind of documentary pornography reassuring and normal, whereas another (like the Abu Ghraib pictures) is deeply shocking and horrible?