Trophy Pictures
[…] the […][US] army took the unusual step of demanding that its soldiers stop posting video clips on the web. And with good reason - last year, a minor scandal broke when it emerged that GIs were sending pictures of dead Iraqis to a website called Nowthatsfuckedup.com in exchange for naked pictures of other people’s girlfriends.
[…]
Fifteen years ago, the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argued - with his tongue partly in his cheek - that the first Gulf war did not really exist but was a mirage conjured up by the broadcast media. More recently, in his 2004 essay War Porn, Baudrillard drew attention to the way in which the garishly explicit images of barbarity arriving from Iraq borrowed from the aesthetics and production values of modern porn.The posing of Iraqi inmates for those famous pictures in Abu Ghraib prison, he pointed out, shot on digital camera and originally intended only for private distribution, smacked of a kind of specialist, niche pornography. The photos, he argued, constituted “the degradation, atrocious but banal, not only of the victims, but of the amateur scriptwriters of this parody of violence”.
[…]
War porn is designed not to titillate, but to humiliate its victims and horrify its audience […]
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. They use the word “titillate” without examinating what feelings or impulses are being tickled by this titillation — as if one could not titillate race-hatred, nationalist grandiosity, misogyny, etc., or as if sexuality were somehow uniquely insulated and isolated from all these things instead of being most intimately entangled with them.
The Spinifex Press anthology Not For Sale (Shameless Plug) was released in 2005. I contributed a lengthy essay on globalisation, capitalism, and pornography/prostitution which was written mostly in 2001-2002. The Abu Ghraib scandal broke while the book was in press, and I managed to wheedle the publisher into allowing me a few extra pages for an Addendum to my essay covering the issue of “trophy pictures,” specifically analysing pornography as a kind of trophy picture. Even the addendum is fairly lengthy, so I’ll offer the first few para here and then a link to the rest.
The Abu Ghraib Addendum from the essay ‘Prostitution for Everyone’ in Not For Sale, 2005 Spinifex Press
This essay was begun before 9/11, and was in near-final draft before the American invasion of Iraq. The original end notes indicate that hints of the sexualised abuse of prisoners were emerging in late 2002 or early 2003. By May 2004 the Abu Ghraib scandal had been officially broken by veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, and as of final copy-editing the scandal continues to spread upwards into the Bush administration. Two things happened which compelled me to expand the terse comment which appears in the end notes.
When the first photographs were made available by the Washington Post and other media outlets, some images alleged to be of Iraqi prisoner abuse were found to be, instead, commercial "war porn" — pornography specialising in military imagery. Specifically, they were of the gang rape of women dressed in flowing black robes and veils, apparently in a barren desert environment, by a group of men dressed in US-style military fatigues. In a discussion group online I read the comments of one angry American, shocked by the Abu Ghraib revelations, who said s/he was "relieved" to find that at least some of the pictures were "just ordinary commercial porno." Apparently it was possible for this person to disconnect — utterly — the existence of a thriving subgenre of porn devoted to racist depictions of the gang rape of "Arab" women by US soldiery, from the fact of actual US soldiery abusing and raping actual Arabs. This honest and naive expression of relief haunted me for weeks.
Then, in correspondence with a feminist colleague, the inevitable question was raised about the US troops at Abu Ghraib and the many digital pictures they took of prisoner abuse — pictures that were traded, collected, shared via email, stored on personal and work-related computers, and finally "leaked" to the American public after months of ongoing torture and sexual abuse had been documented. 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?
[…]
Full Text of the Addendum
Ify:
You know I saw that Iraqi young women being forced to do those filthy things at Alexander Cockburns website. Rape with picture taking is on the increase everywhere. I am not sure if this is racist or not but in France in their suburb-ghettos, young immigrant boys are raping girls and taking pictures. I wonder in all this anti-Muslim sentiment if we will be able to analyze gang rapes going on in Sweden, Austrialia as all a part of the misogyny that runs through Islam. Feminist have been analyzing this for a long time long before being anti-Islamic because the latest fad. Rape is on the increase in South Africa culminating with Pres Zuma’s lying on the stand. There is so much rape going on in South Africa and Sweden that women have been design belts to deter rapist. The funny part about it that as a Christian I have not seen the effort from Islam and Christianity to stop this everyday violence in the same whay they would confront say, homosexuality. Funny huh. “Haiji girl” Huh. Funny I really like your blogs and respect you but in all your half of humanity gets away with so much bull shit. Exactly what do you think is going on in these young mens head. Why the hell do they enjoy rape and think it is funny.
14 August 2006, 3:03 amStan:
The moderation of this and most other sites these days involves dumping enormous amounts of comment spam. It is obviously automated and has even learned how to harvest certain patterns of speech from sites, that it reproduces then inserts links to the spam content. Spam includes real estate refinancing, perscription drugs, on-line gambling, hotels, insurance, Viagra, and a bunch of other stuff. But far and away, the ost common spam content is porn. Prominent within this category are ads for “violent porn,” “lolita porn,” and “rape porn.” Almost as prominent are ads for racial porn featuring exclusively Asian, Black, Indian, etc, women.
As De has pointed out more than once, trophies are a male icon of conquest (remember the hguge photo of a dead Zarqawi’s face behind the Centcom press briefer); and transgression (celebrated by the pomo “sex positive” porn apologists as liberatory) is not forbidden, but reserved as the prerogative of the ruling class, be that an economic, racial-national, or a sex class.
In correspondence with two writer-collaborators, I was asked to explain the Ranger Code of Silence in the Army; and this seems pertinent to the discussion here. I am pasting this in below, and will also direct readers to http://www.ogrish.com for a peek at one very popular site that highlights everything De says here.
From the note to my collaborators on Rangers, the Army, and codes of silence:
(1)
All bureaucratic organizations have an unofficial code of silence that is intrinsic to bureaucracies, as part of a phenomenon called “overconformity.” It is the result of “a defensive informal organization which tends to arise whenever there is an apparent threat to the integrity of the group.” Both Veblen and Dewey have spoken to this at some length. In addition to silence to maintain stability, there is a corollary bureaucratic effect that I talked about in my series that sociologists call “precautionary overestimation.” Durkheim has also written on how technical norms become rigidified and “sacralized,” and as part of the insular nature of the bureaucracy, the “client” (n the case of the military, the public) becomes the antagonist, a threatening presence against those sacred norms… which then are kept secret as a way of protecting them.
The United States Armed Forces is a bureaucracy. Do the math.
(2)
All class solidarities are characterized by codes of silence.
The officer corps and the enlisted troops have a keenly developed and institutionally reinforced sense of class, and at some level see one another as antagonists.
There are, then two codes of silence in the military that operate out of this “unity of opposites”.. based on what officers do not want enlisted people to know, and what enlisted people do not want officers to know.
These complimentary codes of silence are sometimes those based on material antagonisms, i.e., officer VERSUS enlisted. (An officer gets caught by another office in an adultrous affair… mum’s the word.) (A junior NCO conceals a problem from a senior NCO, and the officers find out before the senior NCO does… the senior NCO then holds the junior NCO accountable for not letting it get handled among enlisted people.)
There is another separation of silences that reinforces a division of labor, and this code operates with a wink and a nod, i.e., I want it done, and I don’t necessarily want to know how it gets done. (This one is also very class-based, because it insulates officers from consequences when actions are brought under any form of legal review.)
A fault line in this case is that when XXXXXXX needed to conceal his role in XXXXXXX death, there were enlisted men who were still in legal harm’s way. XXXXXXX was then vulnerable to any enlisted person with a hard grudge. He had to remove the basis for the hard grudge by downscaling the charges from criminal charges to the military equivalent of misdemeanors. XXXXXXXX, unless he is even more stupid than I believe him to be, would not directly collude with the enlisted men to change the investigation (cross the class line). The offer of reduction of charges was probably made obliquely; and we don’t know exactly how.
(3)
Gender is also a kind of class system.
Males are socialized early into a masculine (male sex-class) code of silence. We can see the socializaton early with boys who don’t maintain male prerogative as speech and action inside the sex-class being called fag, pussy-whipped, etc etc. This applies partcularly in the arena of social transgressions. Transgression is violation of norms, and it is typically valorized by the thrill of transgression and consolidated within privileged groups, ie, the aristocracy routinely violated all the norms they imposed on the plebes. Men typically violate the norms they would impose on women (ergo, the double standard). Men share their transgressive sexual and even criminal behaviors with each other with the shared understanding that confidences will be kept inside the male group.
The most destructive male group behaviors are examples of this, be it binge drinking, gang rape, vandalism, or warfare.
(4)
Fraternal organizations amplify the demand for omerta.
As one ascends the status hierarchy within the military, the units become more and more fraternity-like (in the sense of being EXclusive).
One phenom I contend has been inadequately studied in these units is described by Object Relations Psychoanalysis as “projective identification.” Wiki notes:
“Wilfred Bion (1961) described projective identification in the following way: “the analyst feels he is being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognize, in someone else’s fantasy” (p. 149). This ongoing link between internal intra-psychic process and the interpersonal dimension has provided the foundation for understanding important aspects of group and organizational life. Bion’s studies of groups examined how collusive, shared group phenomena such as scapegoating, group-think and emotional contagion are all rooted in the collective use of projective identification. In fact, sociologists often see projective identification at work on the societal level in the relationship of minority groups and the majority class.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Bion
This describes the culture of elite units in many ways, though all members are not equally susceptible to it. It certainly reinforces the need to maintain silences in at a deeply affective psychic level, making the phenom resistant to change.
Something seldom mentioned (as part of the code of silence about Rangers) is that the Rangers have fewer per capita Black troops in the line companies than any unit in the army. The Ranger Battalions have always been a hotbed of subterranean white supremacy, tho many groups (like Asian-Pacific and Latino) are accepted as honorary Aryans… what I call negrophobia is endemic in Ranger units.
Here is an article by Todd Ensign, who is a lawyer working with military resisters: http://mediafilter.org/caq/CAQ57Racism.html
This does not imply that all Rangers are racist. It reflects the fact that Ranger UNITS are racially exclusive, and there is a structural default that creates this situation. Exclusivity and codes of silence go hand in hand.
(5)
So we have this synergy of silence, bureaucratic silence, male silence, and fraternal-elite silence, with every one of these dimensions operating in the Ranger Regiment. Combine that with the threats implicit and explicit in statements signed and directives received to never talk about this, and you have doubly-reinforced silence… except that could backfire. One of the sensibilities inculcated into these kids is also the idea that they are straight-shooters who don’t need hypocrisy. Those who smell the hypocrisy in this, and resent the fact that the truth is being concealed about one of their own (as well as a fellow enlisted man, being figuratively buried by officers), and there may be someone who comes out of the cold.
***end clip***
Thanks to De for putting this up. Extremely important conversation.
14 August 2006, 8:36 amR.S. Morris:
And to help illustrate just how pervasive these class stratifications can be, a quick anecdote.
During the Gulf Coast March early this year, I was involved in helping with a cleanup crew made up mostly of veterans (that particular day–mostly awesome non-vet volunteers other days). My personal minor epiphany came when I ran into a former Army captain who was also working the mucking crew. To my everlasting horror the first thing out of my mouth was “Hi–you’re an officer, so why don’t you tell us where you want us.” To his credit he DIDN’T punch me in the face for inserting him into a no-longer-existant hierarchy that he was desperately trying to forget.
Point is I have been out of the military for twenty years and I am successful, and mildly authoritarian, in my own right now as a business owner (
). I HATED the military hierarchy while I was in, but relished hating all officers, as I was forever a member of the “real” working class of the military–the enlisted.
BUT THAT’S HOW DEEP THIS SHIT GOES! It NEVER goes away, ever. I see a set of silver Captains’ bars and I start to itch with a need to disrespect the person wearing them while simultaneously asking her/him “How high, sir?” SICKSICKSICK! Arghhh.
As I said, just a supporting anecdote.
Randy
14 August 2006, 12:54 pmIfy:
This is probably why men hated Jesus. Jesus did not get along well with biblical bureaucracies, or ranked men. He went against every system they had. If conservative Christians were really Christians they probably would not have too many male friends. Imagine that. While all kinds of porn, sexual violence, and sexual perversion is increasing in the world the only thing that the head leaders and their cheerleaders are making a world wide issue is homosexuality and abortion. They even call speaking out against humiliation which the bible calls an “evil situation” or “oppression”, secular humanism. You never cease to amaze me. You take Alice Walker and feminism seriously huh. Not bad.
15 August 2006, 12:24 amIfy:
One more thing and this is my last message on this site, I am sorry if what I wrote was male bashing or offending to the gentlemen who are on this site. I am not trying to paint women in the positive and men in the negative cause in my world we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
15 August 2006, 12:29 amelaina:
And then there’s the daily-grind type “phenomenon” in which a “regular guy” takes pictures or videotapes of his naked girlfriend and shares it with his pals/posts it on the web. Kinda covered under the auspices of “amateur porn,” but I think it happens “in private” more often than we realize, even with the “permission” of the female partner in question. It happens more without said “permission,” I would guess. Kinda falls into that “code of silence” thing, too, as this is a sorta homegrown version of the commodity fetishism of “amateur”-vein pornography; women will often participate “willingly” if they think that their partner is only capturing images for “private” use- not taking into account the male’s kinda automated assumption, if he’s a “nice guy”, that is, that *private* means *not for sale* and not necessarily exclusive to the couple and shows the pics to his “friends.” But there’s a whole porno-niche out there for guys who do this shit and make money.
Trophy pictures, indeed.
Anyways, just some more of my pre-coffee rambling.
16 August 2006, 5:32 amDeAnander:
Another case where pornography is used as a metaphor with very negative connotations by the same Libruls who defend the real thing:
Climate Porn
Apocalyptic visions of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amount to “climate porn”, a think-tank says.
Story made it to the US Librul blogosphere by way of Tom Paine: Against the Climate Pornographers
now, what on earth does this phrase “climate porn” mean? we’ve already been told by the experts in the MSM that the purpose of pornography is to “titillate”. so “climate porn” is pornography-like because it titillates? because it appeals to emotion rather than reason? (why not then call it polemic or propaganda or agitprop, grandstanding or ‘circus’ or flimflam?) or because it misleads? or because it somehow disempowers its consumer?
we’ve also seen in recent years the label “eco porn” describing (a) grossly misleading green-hog-wash from the Filth Industries, and (b) slick Nat Geo type coffee table travelogues for rich people, and (c) the genre of “SUVs rampaging through beautiful pristine nature” car ads. again, why do liberals who allegedly approve of actual porn slap the label [fill-in-the-blank]-porn onto media of which they disapprove?
this metaphor seems to capture an uneasy, unofficial acknowledgment that pornography is not, in fact, charming or harmless (much as colloquial phrases like F— You and “that sucks” reveal masculinist ideologies of gender, sex, and power). what aspects of it are highlighted in each of these uses of “porn” to describe propaganda, advertising, and sensationalist journalism? I’m still thinking it over.
one more disturbing suspicion… isn’t Nat Geo trophy pictures for rich Anglos? evidence that their media, their wealth, their (popularised science) penetrates (ahem) the entire ecosphere and every last human culture? next disturbing question: is at least some of “climate porn” trophy pictures for industrial humanity? “you wouldn’t believe what we did to this planet”…
17 August 2006, 2:06 amDeAnander:
one more thought.
TomPaine.com can run an article with the title “Against the Climate Pornographers” and it’s all kewl and grewvy.
what would happen if they ran an article by a radical feminist with the title “Against the Pornographers”?
do we need three guesses?
why is it that pornography is a handy metaphor for media which are in some way complicit/disinformational/corrupt/damaging, and yet pornography itself — complicit in violence against women, disinformational about human sexuality, corrupt as hell, and damaging to women’s social standing and safety — remains sacrosanct? how can the word be used in a context which clearly indicates it is a tainted meme, and yet the next minute be a valorised and defended meme?
17 August 2006, 2:12 amlg:
I wonder the point…such mad-glad murder…who loves
17 August 2006, 9:41 amya baby…think people believe in real…red blood
splach’…dead-real…thing is…death aint real…
america…children with toy guns…trees to hide them,glasses to keep harm at bay…winners to dick-
off losers…the game ever play…if a real thing
come over the hill…they will be lost…as for me…
my pack is packed…what the hell more is there to
say.
Sam:
It’s a coincidence you should write about this today as just last night I was running an incident I witnessed in a strip club through my head trying to find the words to describe what I think was going on.
Three teenage boys pooled their money to make a stripper press the heel from one of her stiletto shoes into her vagina, after which they laughed uproariously, gave each other high-fives, and generally spoke and acted as if they were celebrating the conquest of something. It reminded me of deer hunting men in my childhood who shot a beautiful buck and then congratulated each other on the shared kill, only with more laughter.
The last paragraph of the post where you bring up the question of why documenting conquest appears to be an integral part of the conquest brings the point home in the simple asking of the questions in this context.
17 August 2006, 1:24 pmDeAnander:
as if they were celebrating the conquest of something…
they were celebrating the conquest of something — the conquest of another person’s dignity, the violation of another person’s bodily integrity and privacy; and making that other person perform the act herself just adds to the sense of conquest, as it means they have exacted obedience, not merely inflicted defeat. it is exactly the same thrill of domination experienced by the teacher or parent who forces a child to go and fetch the belt w/which s/he will be beaten, then forces the child to say “thank you” afterwards. it is the thrill that Graner and his friends felt when they forced the Iraqi prisoners to pose in pornographic tableaux, to form human pyramids.
to make another person humiliate him or herself in obedience to one’s command is a far more complete victory than merely to beat them up, commit forcible rape, etc. bullying sergeants in the British army are reputed to shout at their recruits, “You are a Horrible Little Man. What are you?” and the recruit is supposed to answer obediently, “I am a horrible little man, Sir!” pimps ask their “girls” “Who’s your Daddy,” and the girl is expected to answer obediently, “You’re my Daddy.” sullen silence is evidence of defiance. total obedience requires parroting the master’s BS back at him, betraying oneself. that betrayal of the self is the master’s ultimate success.
the ultimate success of colonialist occupation comes when the occupied people start enforcing the colonial master’s rules against each other and themselves…
18 August 2006, 2:03 am