April 15, 2008
W.J.T. Mitchell on Errol Morris's new film
In its May issue, Harper's has published a long and thoughtful review by W.J.T. Mitchell of Errol Morris's new film, Standard Operating Procedure (the link is to the Sony Classics site for the film). An excerpt:
The unauthorized, illegal, and unsuccessfully suppressed amateur photos taken by G.I.'s in Abu Ghraib prison are what remain as the icons of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This fact cannot be explained by forensic methods, a shortfall made clear by Morris's own research into the mystery of the Hooded Man, misidentified by the New York Times as Ali Shalal Qaissi—called "Clawman" by the G.I.'s—on March 11, 2006. Morris used his New York Times blog post, "Will the Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up," of August 15, 2007, to clarify matters. In preparing to film Standard Operating Procedure, Morris had discovered (along with many other researchers) that the Hooded Man was actually Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, nicknamed "Gilligan." Morris derives a lesson about photography from this; namely, "the central role that photography itself played in the mistaken identification, and the way that photography lends itself to those errors and may even engender them." It is as if photographs, by virtue of the authority we grant them, compounded with our own prejudices and preconceptions, "attract false beliefs—as fly-paper attracts flies."
Morris's skeptical deconstruction drew seventy-four responses, most of them sympathetic. Dozens of hypotheses were tried out and debated by the puzzle-loving insomniac readers of the Times website over the next few weeks. As the discussion proceeded, however, this kind of search for the "deep truth" behind the photographs began to run into a wall of resistance. Respondents pointed out that the whole search for the truth behind the photograph was missing a much larger point: that the actual identity of the Hooded Man is irrelevant to the power of the image. In fact, one might put it even more strongly and insist that it is precisely the anonymity of the Hooded Man that is the key to the power of the image.
The referent of a photograph, the real object or event "captured" by it, is not the same as the meaning it my acquire as a cultural icon. This meaning can be understood only by looking carefully at the photograph as a formal and iconographic entity, and by tracing its reception among viewers. If the sole photograph of the Hooded Man were the one taken from the side by [Sabrina] Harman, it would not be one of the most famous images in the world today. It is the frontal perspective and the symmetry of the figure that provide the formal conditions for its power. The question, then, is not "Who is the Hooded Man?" but (to paraphrase James Agee on Walker Evans) Who are you who will study this photograph, and what is your responsibility for it, and what will you do about it?
Mitchell goes on to assert that "Morris's reconstruction of [the conditions that surrounded the production of the images] will ... launch a whole new set of more deeply informed reflections on the meaning of Abu Ghraib...." To read the whole article, click here (you may need to be a subscriber for full access).
UPDATE, 4/17: More on the film from Variety deputy editor Anne Thompson.
UPDATE, 4/21: A bevy of links to discussion of the film has been posted to GreenCine Daily.