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Trauma

Trauma. 3. Media Representation and Trauma “Management”. Outline. Starting Questions Trauma Review: from Representation to Media Representation Trauma Representation in Media (1): 張小虹 ; examples and our responses

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Trauma

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  1. Trauma 3. Media Representation and Trauma “Management”

  2. Outline • Starting Questions • Trauma Review: from Representation to Media Representation • Trauma Representation in Media (1): 張小虹; examples and our responses • Trauma Representation in Media (2): Susan Sontag ; examples and our responses • Trauma Representation in Media (3): Diana and Death • “The Management of Grief” • References

  3. Starting Questions • “Are viewers inured -- or incited -- to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the sufferings of people in faraway zones of conflict?” (http://www.susansontag.com/regardingpain.htm )

  4. from Representation to Media Representation • Representation: • impossibility of complete representability; • positions of the ‘story’-teller (betrayal, obsession, self-justification, etc); • ways/mediums of telling; • Positions of listener/viewers. (boundary-crossing, imaginative, voyeuristic, vicarious or comforting experience) • Media Representation: • Wide-Spread and Fast transmission; • Ways of representation  Collective Symptoms • Fast consumption or sympathy

  5. Media Representation (1): 看．不見九二一 • from psychic screen to photography and TV screen • The article’s question: How is the collective memory of 921 Earthquake formed (entering our consciousness, becoming images or being verbalized)? How do we disavow (視而不見) history of the earthquake by consuming its images?

  6. Media Representation (1): 看．不見九二一 Main Points 1. screen memory 0. Prologue: the contrast between vague senses and exact, scientific description of the earthquake; • a. A screen memory (psyche’s protective shield, image screen for self projection Baudrillard’s pure screen. flattened subjectivity and full visibility.) b. A screen memory of 921—and its punctum刺點. (From the white glove to the fear of castration and loss of sight.) • One example of 921 PSTD – temporary blindness of a soldier on the rescue team.  Why are we not blinded? • One Day Trip to the Earthquake Areas  disavowal through fetishization (turning the scenes into spectacles)

  7. Media Representation (1): 看．不見九二一 Main Points (2): TV screen 4. TV: -- continuous flows of discontinuous images; disaster turned into a ‘digital watch’ images—abstracted and virtual real time. -- the TV uncanny (the strangely familiar): the remoteness (event) of the near (images) -- from infortainment to showbiz (interviews, games) + fights and political shows. 5.Media’s Stabilizing/containment functions-- turning on-and-off of disastrous scenes. (like fort-da game or repetition compulsion.) -- satisfying the psychic fascination with the real experience

  8. 看．不見九二一 Main Points (3): the Real and the Ghostly. 6. -- beyond all these visible screens of ‘protection’ and ‘projection,’ the ‘real’ is there waiting to puncture the screen, to knock at our door. fascination with the real experience. -- turning the ‘real’ into the ‘ghostly.’ ( in the folds of history, or of our memory)

  9. Questions • Do you agree with Chang’s argument? • Can we find examples from the recent media report on South Asian Tsunami or 受虐女童(the girl tortured by her father)? • Examples of media coverage: • Scientific Explanation of what Tsunami is and how to prevent it. Also its unpredictability. • The superstitious: • 泰算命仙：泰南海嘯起因總理災星重 • 海嘯、李連杰、部首 -- Explanations of 姓名學 (of 李連杰 and his encounter with tsunami) • The media – sentimentalizing the news on the girl (with music and image).

  10. South Asia Tsunami: Tourism • 1-11/2005 – Yam -- 普吉島情況差不多，住房率從原本的九成，跌到現在的不到一成。普吉島旅遊協會會長吉拉柴（Jirachai Amornpairoj）認為，如果旅客還是未能回籠，普吉島業者將開始裁員，估計可能會有高達兩萬人失業。 http://news.yam.com/cna/international/200501/20050111848654.html • 01-12/2005-- 泰國為恢復旅遊“元氣”，即將啟動旅遊重建計劃，屆時將邀請各國旅遊者前往泰國旅遊。目前，泰國普吉島旅遊已開始恢復，遊船已開始運營，各國遊客重新走向大海。 http://big5.chinabroadcast.cn/gate/big5/gb.chinabroadcast.cn/3821/2005/01/12/152@420443.htm • 1-4/2005 -- Image-Asia -- In Phuket today, as anyone who is here will confirm, there is NO DISRUPTION to infrastructure or public services. (with recent images and words from residents.) http://www.image-asia.com/post_tsunami_phuket_krabi.htm • images of 天堂與地獄 on TV

  11. 看．不見九二一: Some Personal Remarks • Tourism in 災區 (earthquake/tsunami-inflicted areas) –depends on timing (when it happens) and the mentality of the tourists. • (TV) Immediacy and visibility is not always a good way to understand the reported events. • There is definitely an attempt at, or tendency towards, sensationalism in media reports (with spectacles, music, camera focus on crying and fights, esp. entertainment shows’ presentation of victims and their stories). • While we should resist our own tendency to consume without understanding, we can take different perspectives to look at media reports and images—just as there are also different kinds of reports and an increasing awareness of this problem in media reports.  In other words, some burden of the meanings of media representation is on US!!!

  12. Media Representation (2): Susan Sontag • 桑塔格三十年前在《論攝影》裡，即犀利批判了資本主義媒介機制將攝影當做觀覽物的影像消費文化；在去年的《旁觀他人之痛苦》裡，她相當程度的修正、甚至否定了自己早年的論述，認為戰爭、災難等新聞影像，並非只能有消費奇觀的功能，它也可以激發政治行動。尷尬的是，在桑塔格過世之時，我們也同時目睹著美國新聞媒體如何偵騎四出地收購海嘯奇觀影像，以饗美國電視觀眾「旁觀他人之痛苦」的更大需要。資本主義媒介機制之癌，此刻看起來也穩居上風。(郭)

  13. Media Representation: Susan Sontag • On Photography --她揭露鏡頭能創造出詮釋其客體的影像，但卻離真實的經驗、情感愈來愈遠。 • -- discusses the gray area between the amateur and professional photographer, the value of and relationship between the photographic image and the object it represents, and the status accorded the photographer in our society. (Walker) • Regarding the Pain of Others – • the uses and meanings of images, • the nature of war, • the limits of sympathy, • the obligations of conscience. • All images that display the violation of an attractive body are, to a certain degree, pornographic. ( p. 95).

  14. No General Response to a picture of painFrom 'Regarding the Pain of Others' • (First Chapter) “This morning's collection contains the photograph of what might be a man's body, or a woman's; it is so mutilated that it might, on the other hand, be the body of a pig. But those certainly are dead children, and that undoubtedly is the section of a house. A bomb has torn open the side; there is still a bird-cage hanging in what was presumably the sitting room . . . “ (V. Woolf Three Guineas) Invoking this hypothetical shared experience ("we are seeing with you the same dead bodies, the same ruined houses"), Woolf professes to believe that the shock of such pictures cannot fail to unite people of good will. Does it? . . . No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

  15. No General Response to a picture of painFrom 'Regarding the Pain of Others' • “. . . In fact, there are many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding-at a distance, through the medium of photography-other people's pain. Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses.A call for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen.(Arthur M. Kleinman )

  16. No General Response to a picture of painFrom 'Regarding the Pain of Others' • Pain and suffering can be represented to beautify, to uglify, to steel the observer, to numb her, to "acknowledge the incorrigible," to haunt, and to transform (p. 98). Just as pain transforms the sufferer, pictures of pain can transform the observer, making a bystander into a witness, a member of a lonely crowd into a social activist, a nonengaged observer into a healer.

  17. Photo-Realism From 'Regarding the Pain of Others' • "to photograph is to frame, to frame is to exclude . . . it has always been possible for a photograph to misrepresent" (p. 46). Yet, in common-sense realism, "A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence" (p. 47).

  18. Conclusion:From 'Regarding the Pain of Others' • Ending -- “To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism. It universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment. it is absurd to generalize about the ability to respond to the sufferings of others on the basis of the mind-set of those consumers of news who know nothing at first hand about war and massive injustice and terror. There are hundreds of millions of television watchers who are far from inured to what they see on television. They do not have the luxury of patronizing reality. (P. 110)

  19. Media Representation: Photojournalism • An example: Kevin Carter’s photo -- The message is stark and terrible: look at what a basket case Africa is. Africans can't even protect their own children from natural disaster. • Misleading: not a natural disaster at Sudan; How long did he wait before he intervened? Was he inhuman and unethical? (Kleinman 258, 59) Note: He took his own life months after winning the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for the haunting Sudan famine picture.

  20. What do you think? South Asia Tsunami Images (2004/12/27) 印尼強震引發大海嘯，在印度東、 南部地區造成嚴重傷亡，圖為印度 泰米爾納德邦的庫達羅， 1名男子 握著罹難8歲兒子的手痛哭。 （路透） (from China Times)

  21. What do you think? South Asia Tsunami Images Indian fisherwomen collect belongings from the debris of tsunami-destroyed houses at a fishing hamlet in Nagappattinam, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, January 12, 2005. . . . REUTERS/Kamal Kishore。(From Yahoo)

  22. South Asia Tsunami: A Variety of ‘Slide-Shows’ • BBC: • The human impact of the tsunami disaster in sound and pictures(with words from the survivors) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4156329.stm • Your pictures: Asia quake disaster http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4135141.stm • animation of tsunami phenomenon http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/4136289.stm • Chinatimes:目賭大海嘯... http://photo.chinatimes.com/photofile/PhotoReport/Record/R00084SEQ/menu.htm • CNN: IMAGES OF DEVASTATION (Survival, Aftermath—view’s discretion advised, Before and After); animation of tsunami phenomenonhttp://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/tsunami.disaster/ )

  23. What do you think? Numb? Curious? Closer to Reality? Sympathetic?

  24. Media Representation (2): Some Remarks • Ours is an image society and society of the spectacle, so spectaclization is inevitable just as we do depend more and more on images to understand things. 水可以載舟、覆舟． • “Viewer’s Discretion”: We need to decide whether a trauma representation is an ‘acting out’ of trauma (repetition of traumatic experience), a mythologization and self-justification or a ‘working through’ of trauma to bring about constructive actions. • There can be different responses, and oftentimes it depends on how each individual readers listen to the voice of the wound, read the images and/or resist their influences. • Contextualization: If images can haunt us, can become floating signifiers for consumption/entertainment, they can also be ‘contextualized,’ placed in our narratives—or our ways of understanding the world and traumas.

  25. Data/Images - Information - Knowledge • “What turns data into information is the creation of a context. What turns information into knowledge in the expansion of this context. The difference between data, information, and knowledge is the amount of relationships that are contained within it.” (Stalde)

  26. Trauma Representation in Media (3): Diana and Death—Immediate responses • [31 August 1997] Diana died along with Dodi Al-Fayed, her lover with whom she had been dining at the Paris Ritz Hotel in the Place Vendome, and their driver Henri Paul (a security guard from the Mohammed Al-Fayed-owned hotel), from injuries suffered in a car accident in the Alma road tunnel beside the Seine. • Main issues: • Diana as a stranger or an icon; • her death as a spectacle or collective trauma; • the people’s responses as mourning without grieving or silent (British) ways of grieving

  27. Diana and Death (1): Her Symbolic Meanings • Diane: embodies • a general anti-materialist, anti-hierarchical spiritual and moral feeling • a gay icon, a sex symbol, a charitable person and in some quarters a feminist heroine. • her death: • allowed people to mourn for greater and often abstract things that they felt were missing from their own lives: “community, generosity, empathy, love, emotion and compassion” (52)

  28. Diana and Death (2): A Media Event • Spectators’ Calls for tightened privacy laws after Diana’s death and attacks on journalists and photographers at her funeral • vs. the consumer support for press intrusion prior to it. • A global TV event– developing a new British sign, “as a sign that the English were acquiring a new sense of self: one in which restraint and the traditional stiff upperlip were replaced by open displays of public grief” (51).

  29. Diana and Death (3): collective mourning • Immediate responses—demanding the royal family to show grief ‘Where is Our Queen? Where is Her Flag?’ (chap 14 50) conspiracy theory • ‘recreational grieving’  mourning without grief (or mere demonstration of grief) • vs. the public’s silent expressions (e.g. respectful silence and expressions of feeling were mostly made through tokens: flowers, toys and written messages)

  30. Diana and Death (3): collective mourning • Some joined the spectacle and then forgot • A communal trauma that cuts across different communities: some were truly disoriented and grieving –their feelings not less genuine because they don’t know her. --”Trauma, according to Erikson, therefore has a centripetal and a centrifugal force, drawing the individual apart from one group, those who do not share or understand, and towards another, those who do” (56)

  31. “The Management of Grief” Bharati Mukherjee

  32. Bharati Mukherjee • Born in Calcutta, India, in 1940, she grew up in a wealthy traditional family. • Went to America in 1961 to attend the Iowa’s Writers Workshop • Married Canadian author Clark Blaise in 1963, immigrated to Canada • Found life as a "dark-skinned, non-European immigrant to Canada" very hard and moved to the U.S.

  33. “The Management of Grief”: Background • June 22nd., 1985 Air India flight 182, leaving from Montreal for India, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic ocean off the Coast of Ireland. • 329 people died, a lot of them Indian immigrants in Canada. • Suspects: Two Sikh nationalists. One died; trial of the other still goes on (A verdict expected in 2005.) • Consequence: p. 162

  34. Why is Canadian government criticized? • 1. Indifference – seen as “foreign” affair; • 2. Incompetence: • Canadian government already informed: In early 1985, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi was getting ready to visit North America. India asked Canada and the United States to keep close tabs on Sikh militants who might pose a security threat. Many Sikhs around the world were furious over the Indian Government's 1984 assault on the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine. • One person, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was put under strict surveillance. But around the time of the explosion, he managed to go untapped and unnoticed.(source)

  35. Why is Canadian government criticized? 3. police brutality (under the pressure to lay charges ASAP): Within a few months, RCMP officers raided the homes of a half-dozen prominent Sikhs in British Columbia. (source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/airindia/)

  36. Starting Questions • Who else in the government are criticized in the story? (police and Judith Templeton) • Who are seen as the ones to be ‘really’ sympathetic? • What are the processes of healing and recovery presented in the story—of the characters and esp. of the protagonist?

  37. “The Management of Grief” First General Responses: (pp. 163-64) -- keeping the last hope--praying; getting close to ‘them’; searching and waiting; -- Imagining what might have happened then. -- death wish; regret (not expressing enough love) -- trying to find reasons or ones to blame.

  38. “The Management of Grief”: Different Ways of Management • -- Pam, escapes, feeling neglected, wanting to go to California, and ends up serving Orientals. p. 161, 169, 174 • -- Kusum, accept fate, 163, 164, 173 • -- Dr. Ranganathan, another kind of escape, while keeping the connection p. 169, 170, 174, final break 174 • -- the elderly couple p. 171- leave it to their god; insist on their own way and believe themselves "strong."

  39. “The Management of Grief”: Different Ways of Management • -- The narrator (Mrs. Shaila Bhave), • p. 160-162 with apparent calmness, close but detached attention to details around her, • lives in memory (as her protective shield) pp. 160, 170. • final release 174.

  40. “The Management of Grief”: Different Ways of Management • The Canadian government -- evasive 159, tell the different versions – 163; 173 –bomb. • The Irish police – wants to find the probables. 166-67; • Canadians -- indifferent 160, <--> Irish 163-164, 166 giving flowers and showing sympathy <--> Her parents: not blaming on the whole group of people because of some individuals 167 (Sheila’s own limitation—against Sikhs: p. 171)

  41. “The Management of Grief”: Different Ways of Management Two kinds of bureaucracies: • Custom officers; --sticks to formality 167 • Judith– signing papers pp. 162; 170; 172 -- unable to understand, goes by the book, considers them ignorant, a mess.

  42. “The Management of Grief”: Different Ways of Management Theory: • Rejection, 2. depression, (Depressed Acceptance) 3. Acceptance, 4. reconstruction (p. 170) What is not considered? Need to keep hope, 167; They need time to go through their individual process of hope/guilt/regret, Some --prefers ignorance, or their own versions p. 163 Different cultures’ views of grief and mourning.

  43. The Management of Grief: Tentative Conclusion There is always a gap -- between theoretical or cultural representations of trauma and ‘the real’ on the one side, and our/others’ experience of them; -- between our understanding of others’ traumas, histories, cultures and identities and their own constructions of them; Government and dominant cultures’ representations of history and reality are inevitably selective, superficial if not mythologizing. All these make it more important for us to interpret and make meaningful connections actively in this age of globalization.

  44. References • 郭力昕． 〈做為隱喻與啟迪者〉中國時報 2005.01.01… • A Review on Regarding the Pain of Others. http://www.susansontag.com/regardingpain.htm (with an excerpt) • “Susan Sontag.” Susan Walker. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 2: American Novelists Since World War II, First Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Jeffrey Helterman, University of South Carolina and Richard Layman, Columbia, South Carolina. The Gale Group, 1978. pp. 447-451. Source Database:  Dictionary of Literary Biography. • Felix Stalde “The Space of Flows: notes on emergence, characteristics and possible impact on physical space.” http://felix.openflows.org/html/space_of_flows.html • Kevin Carter. http://picturenet.co.za/photographers/kc/

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