I remember when I would watch movies with my parents as a kid, I would always have to cover my eyes when there was a scene where the characters were kissing or taking part in sexual intercourse. From a young age we’ve been giving guidelines as to the things we can and can’t look at and have also been reminded that this will change with our age. One of the most restrictive things that its viewing is controlled of is the naked body or sex. I always wondered why. Why was it that at 9 I wasn’t allowed to look, at 13 I was allowed to look with my parents, and at 21 I was allowed to look alone? And the most important thing here is that in all those years before I was able to watch it alone, I still managed to find a way around it- a way to see it. The naked body is intriguing, but there is such a restriction on viewing it that there is a sense of uneasiness that arises from looking at it with other people. It’s almost as if we’re that 9 year old kid again who is being told to look away. Why are we not allowed to look is something that I don’t understand but I can however say that this power is so much at play that it has become embedded in us. We find it taboo to see images of sex or nudity because we shouldn’t want to look at things like that. We find it taboo if someone has sex on their computer because that goes against the restrictions in place. But the truth of the matter is we want to look. Whether it’s a scene of a crime, sex, nudity, pain, etc. we want to look and it’s almost as if wanting to look is natural but because we live in a society that limits it, we must do it secretly.
As I was writing my essay and watching the BET Honors awards simultaneously, I thought a lot about the concept of a picture and the implications a picture can have on a historical narrative. I attended some parts of high school in the United States and other parts of it in Iran. While I was here, I was presented a narrative of history that centered around the idea of the American as the hero of the story, the British as our wonderful allies (to a certain degree), and certain parts of the Middle East as very savage like. All of these narratives that circulated through our history books and even in some of our English classes were supplemented with pictures and images as if something is almost unreal until you see it with your own two eyes. When I moved to Iran I was enrolled in a history class where everything I had learned in the U.S. was contrasted. The Americans were painted as savage and war- like, the Brits were devil- like people, and sections of the Middle East which included Iran were the intellectuals, the inventors of math and the sciences. I started to wonder what was real and what was not. I couldn’t understand how both of these narratives could be true at the same time until I realized how subjective truth was. I mean yeah, there are certain truths like how killing is bad, or do onto others as you would like done to you that are accepted by almost every society and therefore function as objective universal truths, but for the most part I realized truth is arbitrary. The truth that the Iranian government was able to create was partly due to the fact that they chose to include and exclude certain things, people, and places from their images. The U.S. functioned similarly and rested on the notion that if we don’t see it, it’s almost like it never existed. So then I wondered, how can you be seen? How can a people who are not a part of the dominant ruling class ever be “seen” and I realized the only way is through a revolution. In evaluating almost every revolution, one realizes that it was instigated by an individual that struggled to be seen- a clear example is the Arab Spring which was initiated by h Mohammad Bouazizi, a fruit seller who was tired of “not being seen” and mistreated by the government.
I was watching some ID Investigate show the other night and the criminals were four black men and I must say I wasn’t surprised. Actually, not only was I not surprised they were Africa American but in fact a part of me was anticipating it. Am I racist for thinking this way or have the concepts of African American and criminal been cultivated in my mind as concepts that are intertwined and dependents on one another. In order to legitimize their lynching, their killings, and their mistreatments of Black men, White America would cultivate in the minds of the masses, the narrative of the Negro as a criminal. Not too long afterwards, pictures of middle class African American men became synonymous with a picture of a criminal. To take a closer examination at my own interpretation of the Black man’s body, I thought about how the media represented the [pictures of Mike Brown and Eric Garner in the news during their ongoing trial for their deaths. All these Black men were from the middle and lower middle class strata of the economy. But why is it that when they showed their pictures it made so much sense in our minds to initially associate them as mischiefs and delinquents. To be completely frank with myself, every time we see a picture of a professional successful Black man posted anywhere, my friends and I (a group of diverse individuals), point it out and say something along the lines of “Oh look! They got a Black dude too.” Now, I don’t want this to get misinterpreted as meaning something else. What I’m trying to say is that a picture of a Black guy with oversized clothing in a mugshot looking picture seems all too normal for us- but an image of a Black guy who is successful, is exotic. I asked myself if White America has been able to do such a good job all these years of associating success with whiteness and criminality with blackness that it has shaped our idea of common sense? The answer was yes. Yes, because the dominant ideologies present in our society are the ideologies of the dominant ruling class. I think Marx said it, or maybe Weber, it doesn’t really matter but what does matter is that I am no different in my way of thinking than the people that were around when Jim Crow Laws were in full effect. Why am I no different? Because I am excited when I see a Black man not in the streets and in the work force. Because I have a false notion of the Black man living in impoverished areas as a criminal. Because a successful Black man is not the standard. It is the exception and I know damn well I am not the only one who thinks like this. It is 2015 and I can admit that I have allowed the dominant ideologies present in White America to become so far engrained in me that I have failed to ask- why can’t a picture of a Black man be just that? Why must it already have a negative narrative in my mind prior to any knowledge about the individual?
Growing up in the millennial generation, I have never been shy of the camera. In fact, it was my generation that started the concept of the “selfie.” Whether it is through Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, or any other form of social media, not a day goes by where I am not documenting some facet of my life. To a certain degree it almost doesn’t even matter whether the picture is of me or the food that I am consuming, rather what is important and valued in society today is that I’m being active on social media by uploading pictures and sharing moments of my life with my followers. Susan Sontag captures how generation “Me” looks at photography in her piece On Photography where she argues that “….a photography is not just the result of an encounter between an event and a photographer; picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights- to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on.” This statement couldn’t be more accurate for the world that we live in today. With the use of geotag, it seems like we almost go to certain places just so we can take a picture and upload it for the world to see. No longer is an event accidentally documented or one of those “Why don’t we take a picture while we’re at it,” but it’s more of a “Let’s go here and take a good picture.” Sontag goes on to argue that pictures are documentations of moments- moments that last when we are all gone. It is these moments that will bind us to our youth when we are old and to our families (kids and grandkids) when we have passed. It seems almost as if the picture itself is not important, but the act of taking it is what now takes precedent. A perfect example of this is our graduation photos; the photo itself or how we look isn’t what is the most important but it’s the fact that we were able to capture that moment in time and every time we look at that picture, our mind will remember it as an event (what happened that day, what went on, memories, etc.).
Our culture today is one that is obsessed with capturing the moment. It doesn’t really matter if you were at a concert and got to meet the artist backstage if you didn’t document it. Just like the photographers who documented the Vietnamese bonze reaching for the gasoline can, we too are more focused with capturing the moment than being a part of it. I mean after all, how could you do both? Be in the moment and capture it at the same time? Our generation has said fuck it to the moment and instead chosen to value the art of capturing it. To an extent this reality is worrisome because it places us in a much more passive role than before and it is only in moments when a society is active does it grow and get better. I guess until then, I’m just going to scroll through my camera roll to find something Insta-worthy. After all, this is a generation that prides itself in that. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2015
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