No seu recente livro, The Slave Ship, o historiador marítimo Marcus Rediker documenta o papel desempenhado pelos apelos emocionais e especialmente visuais no fim do comércio transatlântico de escravos. Os recursos visuais eram indispensáveis porque, como argumentou o abolicionista James Field Stanfield, as terríveis verdades do comércio de escravos "foram ocultadas dos olhos do público por todos os esforços que o interesse, a engenhosidade e a influência pudessem conceber".
Em particular, as imagens da vida a bordo do navio negreiro Brooks estavam "entre a propaganda mais eficaz que qualquer movimento social já criou". A empatia, a identificação psicológica e a indignação moral do espectador foram envolvidas por representações gráficas da violência generalizada, da barbárie e da tortura que rotineiramente acompanhavam esta ligação no comércio de escravos.
Reading Rediker’s book prompted me to think about powerful images that affected my own political consciousness, beginning with the civil rights movement. Arguably, although I didn’t see it at the time, the most important photograph of the early civil rights era was that of the hideously mutilated face of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955. Hill, from Chicago, had been visiting his cousins in rural Mississipi. After allegedly whistling at a white woman he was abducted, beaten, shot, and lynched. His mother insisted on a open coffin viewing and photographs appeared in Jet magazine, a black publication. Their impact was incalculably important to African-Americans but to my knowledge the images never appeared in any mainstream media outlets.
Photos that I vividly recall making an impression on me include 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford being viciously taunted by a young white girl as she attempted to enter Little Rock central Escola Secundária on September 4, 1957. Later, images of police dogs attacking civil rights demonstrators and fire hoses being turned on others were seared into my consciousness. And I will never forget the faces of the four little girls killed in the terrorist bombing of the Décimo sexto rua Batista Igreja in Birmingham, Alabama. As a 17-year-old, my earliest memory of Vietnã was the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc on a busy Saigon street in 1963. I can still recall his dignified stillness as the flames enveloped him. Because he was protesting against the U.S.-backed Diem dictatorship I began to question the official story about Vietnã. Later, the June 8, 1972 the image from Vietnã of naked, burned, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, as she fled down the highway after a napalm attack on her village remained imprinted on my brain. I remember wondering how we could permit such moral obscenities to occur. Fast forward: I recently saw the film "Stop-Loss," directed and co-written by Kimberly Peirce, her first feature since the Oscar-winning "Boys Don’t Cry" in 1999. Peirce’s film doesn’t have a political agenda but it is an unflinching take on violence in Iraque and especially the problems facing vets returning to civilian life in small town Texas.
É ficção, mas muitas cenas permaneceram comigo, especialmente uma cena indelevelmente comovente com um veterinário iraquiano hospitalizado. Em alguns aspectos, o filme parecia mais autêntico do que a cobertura mediática “incorporada” ou, na verdade, a total falta de cobertura da guerra real.
The limitations placed on exposure to powerful images that might stir our deepest emotions would make a modern day Dr. Goebbels green with envy. The destruction of CIA torture tapes is but one example. We’ve only seen a fraction of the infamous Abu Ghraib photos, pictures taken by those carrying out the atrocities. I’m not the first person to identify the grotesque parallel between the powerful images of police dogs unleashed on Iraqi prisoners and Nazi SS guards using attack dogs to guard death camp inmates. We know the Pentagon forbids media coverage of the remains of soldiers departing Ramstein Air Base in Alemanha ou caixões voltando para Dover, Delaware. Landstule regional medical center in Alemanha, which routinely receives horribly maimed soldiers from Iraque is off-limits for photos and reporters are closely monitored by military escorts. An acquaintance of mine volunteers as a counselor at the center and recently told me the heartbreaking story of trying to comfort a blind quadruple amputee, the victim of a roadside bombing in Iraque. I went away with the impression that if we could join her daily rounds, NOS occupation would have ended long ago.
E aí reside tanto uma acusação intratável como uma questão incómoda. Quais são as probabilidades de a imagem de um Kim Phuc iraquiano ser publicada hoje? Sabemos que os fotógrafos são rotineiramente banidos da zona de batalha enquanto outros são pressionados à autocensura. Mas podemos especular sobre o poderoso impacto que tais imagens evocariam na sociedade americana, como a nossa agora bem documentada capacidade evolutiva e biológica de empatia poderia ser utilizada para pressionar os decisores políticos. A fotojornalista Mary Anne Golon acredita que as imagens têm poder porque “servem como prova para acusações de atos errados”. Talvez isso explique a ausência deles hoje.
Gary Olson, Ph.D., chairs the Political Science department at Morávio Faculdade in Belém, Pa. Contato: [email protegido]
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