As a non-resident of Ohio (thank the dogs), why?
Data?
Let’s put it this way: Those with the power to control their public image, i.e. paintings / photos / films / statutes through the ages have always been rather keen to make sure that they don’t appear in degrading positions (I consider being dragged down the stairs with your head hitting the stair, pretty degrading, unless you are a bear called Poo, of course).
So either the powerful spend enormous time, energy and resources to look dignified, because they are bored out of their mind, or because how people see you has an impact on how they treat you, and if you want to be treated with dignity and respect, you better look dignified and respectable.
There is a whole industry built on the assumption that your public image is hard currency. And its practitioners go to enormous length to ensure that their paymasters do not appear in undignified images. So as long as the queen, the pope, Mickey Mouse, Beyonce and Princess Leia and anyone else with a bit of money can and does insist on controlling their public image, it is safe to assume that there is a connection between how you appear and how you are treated.
It is highly unlikely, that the person in this video has been asked whether they are happy with this image of themselves plastered over the inter web.
I know that I wouldn’t want to appear on a loop being dragged down the stairs, and I know that pretty much no one I know would like such a version of themselves on the inter web, unless I am going to court and I am using the image for a purpose.
I also know that there is a very good reason why e.g. images of Minstrels are not ubiquitous, and that anyone who would post images of Minstrels would need to do some pretty good explaining, because images of Minstrels are just not ok. Because we don’t want to associate blackness with ridiculousness. And there was a time when a Minstrel was one of the biggest Hollywood acts. But it’s just not on anymore, because society evolves.
If you really want to think about / see research on the image of insanity and its cultural impact you could start here:
Sander Gilman Seeing the Insane - Sander L. Gilman - Google Books
That’s a bit like saying that a single note of music is the same as a musical phrase. It sounds different and a gif looks different, otherwise what’s the point of making it. But I am not going to go analytic on you…
Yes, it contains more information, better describes the situation and leaves less space for ambiguity. Overall good.
I think you underestimate the repetition / loop factor. Repetition does something to the brain…
It’s annoying after third pass. But that’s about it.
And one other thing, you seem to underestimate the power of the human imagination. I have never seen an original footage of the gas chamber but it doesn’t diminish my capacity to conceive of the horror of a gas chamber death.
Maus by Art Spiegelman has had a greater impact on me than any other image of the Holocaust I have seen (and definitely greater than awful Schindler’s List) and I studied the history of the Holocaust.
Maus was brilliant in showing how the slow and steady erosion of dignity facilitated behaviour in the master race, that we would now consider pathological.
I guess what I am calling for is a more conscious / reflected use of images, because how images represent reality and how our perception is impacted by that representation is far from simple.
Yup. Sheriff Timothy Zemerly added: “Any other thugs want to come on over to Holmes County and have some fun, we’re a-hirin’.”
Hmm. But what did Zymirliy say?
More on topic, the article doesn’t give any real details as to what happened. If it was indeed an emergency with someone known to be mentally ill, intoxicated, and threatening harm, then he may actually have been doing his best to try to help and things just went badly.
This isn’t clearly like the ‘bad cop attacking people’ videos that we’re seeing so many of lately. Yes it’s unpleasant and looks bad, but depending on the situation, it may have seemed necessary to get her out immediately, and it’s quite possible that he did not intend for it to happen the way that it ended up happening.
I’m not being an apologist - I’m usually on the other side when it comes to abuse of force - but this article just makes a whole lot of assumptions. Anyone who’s dealt with situations like that knows how easily it can get out of control and how easily that can get misinterpreted.
Is that a thing now? To me, it sounds like “Instead of summoning Batman (and waiting around until the heat-death of the universe, because Batman is a fictional character) the deputy attempted to actually deal with the situation that he was involved in”
That may be wrong, the sheriff does say that he was appalled after all, but the story is weak. It doesn’t back up the assumptions at all. Tell us that there was no real danger or emergency and/or that a ‘mental health team’ was standing by with a sufficiently short response time. Then this story will irritate me as much as the rest of them.
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I disagree, and I think @drpfenderson’s statement rings true. Images and video of conflict, such as (“Iconic images of the Vietnam War”, CNN) footage from Vietnam, whether photo stills or video, was one of the things that moved America to end military involvement in that conflict (I’m thinking specifically of Eddie Adam’s horrific and iconic shot specifically, but there are numerous others to consider).
And unless I’ve been reading BB comments entirely wrong, it’s ridiculous to state that the people visiting this site do so to gawk and chatter and then do nothing (in fact, in that regard, speak for yourself). In fact, last weekend I posted a video to BB that contained a repeated cut of a man committing suicide by pistol. That clip was a small part of the video, and I posted it first, and thought about it later–which was really careless of me. Wasn’t long after I posted it that another user rightly messaged me about it, and I removed the post immediately (when I shouldn’t have posted it in the first place). All of which is to say that it seems ridiculous to me that you might call out BB, its mods, or its userbase as being callous and uncaring and inactive in politics.
At the very least, I’ll agree that the GIF of the woman coming down the stairs is too much–a one-time video of that moment would’ve been more than enough, but the constantly replaying GIF doesn’t do anything for the story. I scrolled past it, but I could have flagged the post and indicated my displeasure. Did you try that route?
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There are plenty of racist assholes in the comments here. It’s also VERY easy for otherwise “good people” to fall into sensationalized traps where you have to blast stuff as loudly as you can, spread it as wide as you can, without any thought as to who you’re helping or hurting or the feelings of people directly effected by matters.
At the VERY LEAST, it’s hugely inappropriate to have those animated gifs, and any depictions of violence not under a cut. It is hugely inappropriate to title headlines like “WATCH this cop beat someone up”, as I mentioned above.
I’m not saying that BB is “inactive in politics”, but rather that a lot of people spread this stuff just to spread it. I expect boingboing to show more care and more regard for the victims of these things then they have been. I expect them to be different then the people who plaster the bodies of police shootings or whatnot on their blogs to act like they’re “helping”. That’s why I’m calling this stuff out - because I know they DO mean better, and can be better.
I was unaware that the flags would be read by the authors in that way - it seems really weird to use the report a post system to object to main blog content.
And it’s been my experience that they’re almost immediately identified/flagged as such and removed or otherwise ridiculed/responded to in the proper way.
And again–I agree in this respect. I’m no fan of autoplay GIF images in a top post for my own reasons and I’d much prefer users being given a choice as to whether the thing plays or not. That said, I made my thoughts known to the admins (via a forum post), and they can do what they want with that.
Given a story such as the one we have in this post, how might you have approached it differently (with deference to the admins, who might be sweeping this into a new thread at any moment)?
Lastly, I wrote:
And my apologies. I hate it when people tell me to just scroll past something without offering any other possible action. As I said above, I offered my thoughts on the autoplay GIFs to the admins, and as I don’t own or operate the site, that’s about as far as I’m willing to go in that regard.
A picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth 24000 words per second (60000 wps if in HD).
As for the normalising effects of seeing pictures, videos and gifs of the violent act that the article was about, it’s still pretty shocking to me. I think it’s important to not let this footage be forgotten or buried like I’m sure the deputy would like (unless he’s got it on his myspace or something). If the clip was sped up or put to music or tagged “lol” it would of course be in poor taste, but the fact that it is a gif doesn’t make it less impacting. I appreciate the concern for the woman’s privacy, I know if I was handled in a similar way I wouldn’t feel great about going viral and having the humiliation shared so freely, but it is important footage. My resolution- blurred face time.
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In this specific case, just having any video of it not in the article proper, especially not an auto-playing gif would be fine. I see nothing wrong with “The video can be found on the ABC website”. The videos being available is inevitable, but I think we need to treat them differently then we do videos of cute kittens playing with yarn.
What really gets me though is that this is the second case of this in a week, with the other being this post, where the headline + gif was really inappropriate: http://bbs.boingboing.net/t/watch-florida-cop-treating-handcuffed-homeless-man-like-hungry-zoo-animal/
It’s a pattern of behavior which is why I’m pushing at it.
Nothing to apologize for at that part, I just honestly didn’t know that flagging posts would go to the right person.
Edit: Don’t want to drag stuff TOO off topic but…
Not really? There are plenty of racist or sexist posters who are pretty much “Regulars”, and continue to comment in negative ways on a repeat basis, but it goes pretty much untouched. You have to be pretty blatant about your bigotry, and even just white-whining about reverse racism and how white people have it so bad, or going on about how awful women are in general and their feelings don’t matter isn’t enough to get you banned.
I see violent police officers are like rapist priests. They protect their own!
Presumably because they were afraid of being further beaten up by the rest of the cronies.
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The jokes on him, the next county over has all the mentally ill women housed in cells downstairs.
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I like that face, that is really what you expect the slightly psychopathic not very bright cop in a Coen brothers film to look like.
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