For me, this is not a negative thing. Pictures of non-white bodies are consumed in a troubling way, especially bodies depicted in war, pain, and death. There’s really no equivalent visual consumption of white people’s suffering in this way - there’s a visceral understanding that it would be disrespectful, whereas the proliferation of images of non-white bodies in suffering is explained away for moral, even activist, reasons. But even as the intent might be to educate or arouse empathy, visual evidence of US wrongdoing does not necessarily spur people to action. (It might, in Banksy’s case, make for some shitty art.) Recent police brutality videos are some evidence of this.
It seems disrespectful to me that Phan Thi Kim Phuc’s picture is being called “iconic” by many here - “iconic” is just as easily used to describe that photo of Marilyn Monroe on a subway grate. A photo of a naked Vietnamese child in unimaginable suffering became public currency, beyond her control, without her consent. Please try to understand why this might not be ok, and why what you see as censorship might actually also contain a valuable lesson in whose bodies’ suffering you feel entitled to view over and over again.
I think the point was that the consumption of violent imagery of marginalized people has a problematic history and it’s hard to deny that Jewish people weren’t othered and marginalized prior to the holocaust.
At what point does imagery go from awareness raising to yet another commodified product employed for purposes other than advocating for real action?
It’s also an incredibly graphic image as to the horrors of war. I would suggest reading up on what she has to say about it, her long friendship with the photographer, and how she has used this image to create the Kim Phúc Foundation which assists children in war town areas. You should try to understand why this image is OK, and why what you see as shielding a child is less helpful to what she herself doesn’t want to censor.
It is iconic because it is horrifying and that horror should make us all reconsider any military action.
This particular photo did indeed help change Americans’ attitude toward the war in Vietnam, which only ended because popular support for it evaporated.
And yet, without such images we tend towards apathy. Genocides are crimes that people love to look away from, for instance. I think letting the White House hide behind the phrase “acts of genocide” would have been eminently easier without the footage of people being macheted in Rwanda. Now more than ever, we’re seeing small ethnic conflicts that are getting drowned out by our more privileged concerns.
I don’t see how we increase the status of other people’s humanity in our eyes by ignoring their suffering, or being too weak to watch it. Especially in the case of ostensible democracies where we should be forced to see the horrors we create, like ISIS, or the less savory products of our bombings.
To go back to the original story, being aware of participating on Facebook makes every time you post feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. (source)
Aaaaand, this is a pretty serious thread. “Suffering” through facebook is not even remotely comparable to being napalmed. #firstworldwhiteguyproblems
Well, sure… but like, at least 5 years after support evaporated and with an incredibly violent detour through Laos in the process (which was Nixon’s secret plan - Vietnamization, but only after some major escalation).
We got out of Vietnam, because it was clear we were losing, not because popular opinion turned against it, I’d argue.
These sorts of violent images of the war were around for several years, and well before we stopped sending new troops and finally pulled out altogether.
American cultural reasons, that is. Here’s another iconic image from the same era that presumably doesn’t offend American cultural mores because no one is naked.
I understand this point, and I agree to a large extent… but where is the line here? Especially, when @Katie_Kim points out, it’s almost always POC we see. Many people talked about how images of the suffering of refugees have opened their eyes, but it’s not like it’s done that for everyone. And especially with events in the past, there is a real danger of commodifying that violence in a way that does no real service to those suffering now. It’s not like the Islamophobia that’s seeing a spike thanks to Trump has evaporated due to the picture of that young Syrian boy from a couple of years ago. The films about the Rwandan genocide have done nothing to raise awareness of the situation in places like South Sudan.
So, how do we balance understanding and empathizing with not being exploitative?
