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The Visual Politics of Humiliation
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Something has been bothering me about the images of abused prisoners in Iraq, but I couldn’t articulate it until today. Aside from the horror of the abuse, and the pictures, there is something odd about the way they’ve been presented.

In every case that I’ve seen, any visible genitals of the naked prisoners were obscured or blacked-over by the media. In every case that I’ve seen, visible (unhooded) faces of prisoners were left clearly visible.

Now, obviously, the purpose of stripping them naked and photographing them, and likely the purpose of having female soldiers mock them while naked, is (aside from the sexual-sadistic thrill it may give to the torturers) to play on Iraqi cultural values of modesty and sexual privacy. In addition to the physical torture they may have suffered, and the humiliation of being stripped naked and abused sexually or in sexually-suggestive ways, the abuse is compounded by the prisoners’ being observed in their humiliation, especially while naked, and especially by women. That aspect of the torture is increased immeasurably by the threat or knowledge that pictures of this embarrassment will be circulated around the world. Reportedly, the torturers were encouraged by the interrogators to take photos of their abusiveness for precisely this reason.

What this means, however, is that the circulation of these photos around the world is having precisely the effect intended by the torturers. And more than this, the media are - unthinkingly, I’m sure - contributing to this effect by identifying the men in their despair. I do think these photos should be publicized and the immensity of the abuses in Iraq made clear - but there are ways to do this while preserving the anonymity of the victims.

The media made a conscious choice that parts of these images had to be censored - the genitalia were all carefully obscured. However, this choice was obviously in service of the sensitivities of the viewing audience (and, of course, those of Michael “whiny childish dickweed” Powell). The faces of the victims were all left visible, and thus their identities were made available. Very likely, this will be the thing the victims themselves will most regret about this coverage; no concern was shown for their reactions.

In other words, the media have chosen to censor these images out of concern for their impact on the viewers but not out of concern for their impact on the victims.

Considering that some of the abuse pictured in these images is a form of sexual battery, and apparently is felt to be so by the victims, the intrusiveness of the broadcast of the pictures is something to take seriously. American media routinely shield the identities of sexual crime victims within the US; somehow it didn’t seem necessary to do so in this case. I don’t know the reason: because they were Iraqis?, because they were men?, because the abuses were so bizarre that the conceptual link to domestic sex crimes didn’t suggest itself?

However it happened, I do think that the media have made the wrong choice in this case. I suspect that, if you had asked them, the victims would prefer to have their genitals shown and their faces covered than the other way around. At any rate, I think the media should have thought first of pain of the victims and then of the aversions of the viewing audience. It would have been easy enough to cover the faces and the genitals, but no effort at all was made to preserve the privacy of the victims. It wasn’t just a secondary priority; it didn’t seem to occur to anyone at any point in the process.

They say a lot more pictures are on the way, and that there are pictures of actual rapes and other violent abuses. I hope these are handled more sensitively.

May 10th, 2004 Politics, Culture, Iraq | 6 comments