| Yes, I do think it's a hoax--not that Berg didn't die, or even get decapitated, just that I distrust the way this video says it happened and the media's completely uncritical response to that narrative. There's still a tendency to assume videos or photos are objective truth, and so as soon as they're disseminated various parties start claiming them as evidence. Whether the video is "true" or not, its message is something we already know, which is that certain violent elements want us out of Iraq (well, duh--and as you said, the simple message is "we can kill you") or that we need to suppress our own internal conversation about torture because our enemies are more implacable and mean than we are (which I don't agree with). What isn't discussed is that it's first and foremost a video--a mediated thing as opposed to a real event with witnesses who can be questioned, etc. It's the ultimate artifact of propanganda, available online so the right can screech and the left can tut-tut. What also isn't discussed is the video's value as entertainment, which is where I think Sue de Beer comes in. She's been looking pretty squarely at the death-narratives that play out in plain view in our culture--I remember she was fascinated a few years back by Diesel's "dead teenagers" campaign, which were grim pictures of literally wasted youths used for ironic marketing. "Faces of death" tapes are a huge underground economy (whoops--my hits are about to go up). Yet when the Berg video comes out the pundits soberly discuss the "evidence" of a horrendous killing and never discuss it in the context of all this related pop-culture lore. We already know what the video wants us to think, what we should be asking is, which side's internalization of the snuff film is this?
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What isn't discussed is that it's first and foremost a video--a mediated thing as opposed to a real event with witnesses who can be questioned, etc. It's the ultimate artifact of propanganda, available online so the right can screech and the left can tut-tut. What also isn't discussed is the video's value as entertainment, which is where I think Sue de Beer comes in. She's been looking pretty squarely at the death-narratives that play out in plain view in our culture--I remember she was fascinated a few years back by Diesel's "dead teenagers" campaign, which were grim pictures of literally wasted youths used for ironic marketing. "Faces of death" tapes are a huge underground economy (whoops--my hits are about to go up). Yet when the Berg video comes out the pundits soberly discuss the "evidence" of a horrendous killing and never discuss it in the context of all this related pop-culture lore. We already know what the video wants us to think, what we should be asking is, which side's internalization of the snuff film is this?
- tom moody 6-18-2004 7:25 pm