Blog Assignment #5

Photography has created an environment of imagery is which parts of the war were broken from context and mixed together to enact a form of surrealism.  In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag argues, “That our capacity to respond to our experiences with emotional freshness and ethical pertinence is being sapped by the relentless diffusion of vulgar and appalling images – might be called the conservative critique of the diffusion of such images” (109). Sontag is not correct in assuming that an ordinary snapshot creates some form of aggression when you look at the images of the actual effects of violence. Sontag was once criticized for not providing photos of knowledge, but the appearance of knowledge. For one thing, every image (in print and media) creates a thousand words in the mind of the viewer. There’s no immediate visceral impact. Documents and photos do not simply showcase combat consequences. They are part of the rhetoric behind war. The “good taste” of editors and other positions of power in the choices of these “moving images” shadow a number of concerns and anxieties of public order and public morale. For example, Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima” represents something rare in the history of war movies - an event that one of the country to empathize with the director to tell a story from the perspective of a former war enemy. A more impressionistic approach of imagery in the movie emphasized the unbearable psychological pressure caused by prolonged labor, deprivation and bombardment. The claustrophobic element is obviously required, but Eastwood makes it possible to breathe through the movie with action engaging characters. Eastwood’s choices of images are used for strategic purposes as the photographer's role is more ambiguous. Because of the density of the historical references to the war, the way that we would prefer not to imagine the war is a task that is painful because the stirring images can only supply an initial spark of fear.