>Isn't it interesting to consider, for
> example, how
> the institutional media (CNN, for example) was at first fixed to set
> location in mid-town Manhattan for its shots of the World Trade Center,
> whereas people with home video cameras had far more revealing angles from
> which to shoot? This priviledged position is no longer the network camera,
> but the small, hand-held camera owned by anybody, anywhere.
Yes, I agree. I was particularly shocked and upset by two of those
'revealing angles' - the two casual amateur films of the north tower already
in flames, one in long shot at a distance, the other at an extreme upward
angle. Like so many ordinary 'tourist' images, they were clearly not
anticipating anything, just recording an extraordinary thing that had
already happened. And both indavertently included another person, standing
there watching; and, also inadvertently, the casual conversation about this
extraordinary thing taking place as they were watching. And then the second
plane, catastrophically transforming the already shocking reality into
something of a completely different order; in the long shot distant image,
travelling the whole length of the frame so smoothly and inevitably you
couldn't believe how much time there was before it hit; in the extreme
upward angle, breaking so quickly into the top left hand corner of the frame
that you had to see it five or six times before your eye could get to the
right place to catch it.
I think these images will change the way we see, the way the Zapruder
footage changed the way we see. They've changed the way I will see special
effect for ever. I don't know if I ever want to see it again. I wonder what
Sean (Cubitt) thinks about them? Apparently Bin Laden calls these things
'spectaculars'. Obviously, (if it was him) that means that at some level he
is systematically trying to exploit the ideology of visibility he is also
seeking to attack. But I don't think that means we shouldn't look, because
he doesn't control the way we can *think* our looking. As with the Zapruder
footage, isn't there a responsiblity to those who have died to look, and to
work out what exactly it is that these images are witness to?
Erica
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