[Reader-list] Images and Weapons

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Two interesting ideas can be drawn out of the discussions on this list for 
the past few days. Its all about Images and Weapons.

1.It is possible to lie with images 
(whether or not the CNN footage of the cheering Palestinian kids is true to 
the moment is less important than the fact that News Networks do sometimes 
muddy the truth with images)

2. It is possible for people to kill themselves and thousands of other people 
for the sake of an image. 
This image can be a picture of heaven, or hell.
(here, consider - the image of an after life that is preferable to life as it 
is - the program that ticks in the suicide bombers mind - as suggested by 
Richard Dawkins's essay)

Why should we be so reluctant to accept this fact?

Images cause as much sorrow as they cause joy, or wonder. To pretend that the 
realm of images and of image making is devoid of ethical dilemmas is to 
presume that images are actually not about life as it is lived and about 
death as it is died. 

We are happy to hold an ethical torch to science, we are happy to ask 
difficult questions about technology, what makes religion, the spirit, the 
arts, culture, holier than nuclear physics, finance capital or military 
strategy ?

Once, someone said, "when I hear the word culture, it makes me reach for my 
gun". It could be said today, "when you hear the word, gun, you reach for 
your culture". As if guns and culture need not go hand in hand. They do, and 
then again, they dont. 

The national anthems that goad people to war are also music. 
The mysticism that produces jihadis, crusaders, dharamyoddhas is also 
mysticism. 
Just as the science that produces chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is 
also science. 

There is nothing less scientific in a smart bomb. There is nothing less 
musical in a war song, or less mystical in the cult of martyrdom. 

Anyone who makes images , or deals in images, or circulates images(artists, 
photographers, filmmakers, new media practitioners, writers, prophets, 
mystics, curators, art dealers) is as culpable, or not, depending on the 
images, as those who make weapons, deal in weapons, circulate weapons.

Because some images can be weapons.

Just as some weapons ( planes crashing into tall buildings) can become 
images, which in turn can be  used as weapons again.