In class Monday, we discussed “Welcome to the Desert of the Real” by Zizek. Zizek asks “Was not the framing of the shot itself reminiscent of spectacular shots in catastrophe movies?”
This may seem cruel and insensitive to many, considering how devastating that day was to so many people and how seriously our nation takes the issue. However, it could be argued that certain segments of the media and entertainment industry did treat it like “spectacular shots in a catastrophe movie.” In a previous art history course I took, Self and the Other in Art, we discussed the photograph “The Falling Man” by Richard Drew, a photographer for the Associated Press. The photograph was taken on 9/11 and shows a person that jumped falling. Art critics admire the symmetry and geometric balance of the painting and how the man’s body is perfectly vertical, like the lines of the building. People insert different meanings into the man’s composure. Some view him as oddly relaxed and nonchalant, maybe rebellious. Others see stoicism and willpower or resignation. Some see a sense of freedom. Papers across the country that ran the photo were forced to defend themselves against charges that they “exploited a man’s death, stripped him of his dignity, invaded his privacy, and turned tragedy into leering photography” (Junod 2016).
Despite these criticisms of exploiting a man’s death, people wanted to know who this unnamed man was. A reporter, Peter Cheney, was assigned the task to find out who the man in the photo was. He thought it might be a man named Noberto Hernandez, Noberto’s family refused to talk to Cheney. He went to the funeral unannounced and showed the photograph to one of Noberto’s daughters and she ordered him to leave.
The media turned a real catastrophe and treated it as a piece of entertainment. A grieving family was harassed while they were mourning so that a reporter could get a story on who the man in the famous photograph was. The man falling died a horrible death, anyone with context for the picture knows that. Yet a part of us can’t help but admire and analyze it on an aesthetic level as if he were just a fabricated character and not a real person. Is this the product of human nature or our culture?
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