The politics of the image

Today you read about and listened to people debating the ethics of publishing a "selfie" photo of the Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. At issue is the question of glorifying, or at the least humanizing a monstrous act.  Does this image make us reflect on the fact that "the boogie man" can be among us, he does not necessarily stand apart and call attention to himslef by projecting a monstrous image.  Or, on the contrary, does it create a barrier to reflection by being so controversial that we may react with visceral outrage , not caring to explore the issue of images when so many lives have been destroyed.  Today you will reflect on what you have read and listened by exploring the issue yourself.  Take a stand and join your voice is discussing the politics of the image.

Meanwhile, take a look at some iconic Rolling Stone covers of the past.

 

Now how does Tsarvaev fit within the framework of these images?

For a look at famous covers, click here

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine

Last month, when I opened my RRSP statement, I was quite pleased to note a 9% increase in my Global Energy Fund.  On the other hand, when I fill up my gas tank twice a week at $126.4/litre I feel a lot of pain.  And when I see images of unrest in the Middle East, I cheer for the victory of the people over the forces of oppression and cringe as pro-regime forces attempt to crush the popular movements and I am forced to admit to myself, as if I didn't already know already, that it's all interrelated. My mutual funds, my car, my CNN, my MTV, my iPhone, my grocery cart are all links in a chain that bind us from our safe -haven of  insouciance to the rest of the world.  My conscience has known this for a long long time but the recent world events that are turning me into a news junkie have made me conscious of my conscience.  I can no longer look away.  I can't go on living as if my actions have no impact on the world.

The paradigm is shifting.  I am struggling with the following question:  how can I continue to live my life as if I am not concerned when the world is in such upheaval?  Are you familiar with the old  R.E.M. lyrics?  It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

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But...I. don't. feel. fine.

I watch in awe and despair as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis transform parts of Japan  into an apocolyptic ground zero.  And yet, life goes on here.  For example, the night after the earthquake, I watched the news in horror and then stayed up until midnight filled with guilty pleasure, licking the dregs of leftover chocolate fondue while watching Sex and the City: The Movie and revelling in its irreverent silliness.  I am a terrible, frivolous person!

The other day, my kids were incessantly bickering over ipods, iphones ,the  Wii and the laptop.  I couldn't take the spoiled sense of entitlement any longer so I sat them in front of CNN, made them look at the images of devastation from Japan and lectured them:  "You cannot fight over your personal entertainment choices when there is a nuclear meltdown on the other side of the world.  Banality is immoral boys!"  Its the post-apocalyptic parenting equivalent of the old standby:  "Eat all the food on your plate--don't you know there are children starving in Africa?"

I believe in resilience, in social justice, in the victory of the good over the forces of evil.  But today I feel like a helpless spectator with the uneasy knowledge that I am, in some small way, involved in the world.  And as R.E.M. plays in an endless loop at the back of my mind, a line from the prophetic William Butler Yeats (Ireland)  poem The Second Coming emerges to the forefront:  "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."

If you are in a doom and gloom mood like me, I invite you to ponder  the entire poem, written in 1919, in the disillusioned aftermath of WWI.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed in the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!  Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocky cradle,
And what rough beast, its now come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Bonhomme Carnaval, our new anti-hero

Dear Maclean's,

Imagine my shock when I woke up on Monday morning and heard of the scandalous controversy that has shaken all of Québec:  Québec is the most corrupt province in Canada! My first thought was not without a hint of sarcasm:  Thanks for the enlightenment Maclean's , I really need you to tell me how corrupt our politicians are.  Of course  politicians are corrupt, that is the nature of politics: where there is money at stake, corruption is sure to follow.  Nevertheless, you seem to assert that there is something in the the very nature of being Québecois that leads to corruption.  Isn't that a bit like affirming that because of this negative article,  Maclean's is a racist, xenophobic magazine?

In the end, it doesn't really interest me who deserves the title of Canada's most corrupt province.  All of them can win the gold medal in this category.  What fascinates me however, is your appropriation of a beloved symbol of the heartwarming joie de vivre of our wintery province in order to shock, outrage and therefore sell more magazines.  Is your intention to inform or is it to make a profit through sensational Quebec-bashing?



Notwithstanding the simplistic analysis evident in the  two articles that  just attempt to validate the condescending perception of the the Rest of Canada in relation to Québec, your cover attacks the integrity of our national folklore:  the Bonhomme Carnaval, symbol of our bonne humeur, our warmth, our difference.  You portray our lovable mascot as a bandit, an diabolical bad guy making off with the goods.

Can this be a new chapter in the never-ending epic of the battle between the forces of good and evil?  Between the pure and the corrupted, the hero and the villain?  Alas, one  question remains, who is whom in this story?