Dare to Look, Part 1

Advertisements for Death by Susie Linfield, NY Tiimes 1.23.14, demands that I respond. Perpetrator photography has come to the fore most recently in the just-released archive of Assad’s torture victims. “Some of these photographs are disgustingly graphic and reveal the ways in which the human body can be undone; others...quiet portraits of terror and powerlessness in the face of death.”

“There is a double horror,” she says, in the act of looking at perpetrator images. "First and most obviously, they show repellent things, fearsome things, unbearable things... But this revulsion is intensified by the knowledge that these images were made not as protests against viciousness but rather in celebration, or at least documentation, of it.”

“The very existence of such photographs testifies to the fact that such acts can be cause for satisfaction, for pride, for glory--or even for amusement. (It's striking how many smiles appear in Nazi photographs and those from Abu Graib.)”

I don't, don't, don't want to look at these images. I never do. I'm afraid of my own reactions, the disgust, the fear, the horror--the memories lingering, my sleep disturbed, my equanimity upset. I argue that such images are better ignored--after all they were created to produce in me the effect they do. What if I become inured to this “torture porn?” Will my hopefulness become ridiculous and be replaced by a disgusted despair? Out of fear, out of self-protection, I cannot look.

Yet somebody must. These acts are outrageous; we must be furious at them. Everything that represents hospitality or friendship is violated. What is the expression of the mutual affection of God-in-love and the Beloved is befouled and corrupted. Healing, hosting, helping, companioning, conversing, all the 2nd  person deeds are inverted and mocked.We are called to practice these with particular Others, but perhaps we're also called to act for hospitality itself, friendship itself, on behalf of all Others everywhere. 

Perhaps my challenge is not to avert my eyes, but to look and be aroused to act more creatively and courageously than ever before against these kinds of torments and the systems that foster and promote them. To absorb these images, however, without a vehicle for taking action is too scary. Is this what risking is all about? Getting ready to do what I don't want to do, then doing it, all for the sake of honoring that which I feel is central to the significance of life. The  point of the poniard is touching my heart. Dare, Peter.