Let It Come Down?
Violence? Pornography? Entertainment? Freedom? Torture? Culture? Censorship?
Recently I saw another photo from Abu Ghraib prison. In comparison with what I’ve seen before, this one was decidedly tame, but it shocked me even more deeply than the others. It shows the battered, plastic-wrapped corpse of a murdered Iraqi detainee, and leaning over him, a young American soldier, beaming at the camera and flashing the customary thumbs-up. The thing that really shocks me is the expression on this woman’s face. For her grin doesn’t appear to be one of sadism or cruelty, as we might expect - or even understand - but of happiness. Happiness. She looks happy, as if she’s really, really enjoying herself. When I first saw it, I couldn’t stop looking at this picture, at the smile on her face, trying to work out just what was going through her mind. Trying to understand how she could possibly detach her compassion and humanity so completely from the bloodied, broken body on the floor. I suppose it could be attributed to the brutalising nature of the army, the desensitisation of warfare, and the steady demonisation of Arabs in the Western media. But I also think it has a lot to do with certain Western ‘values’ themselves, and the way in which our culture has grown to perceive itself in recent years. I’ll try to explain. I’m thinking aloud. I don’t know exactly where this is going, so bear with me.
In Tuesday’s G2, I came across an interesting feature by David Aaronovitch, responding to an earlier article by Susan Sontag. Aaronovitch paraphrases Sontag’s ‘them not us’ interpretation of the Iraq prison torture scandal, in which she lays the blame on ‘America’s increasingly out-of-control culture of violence, in which sex, entertainment and physical brutality are intertwined.’ This trinity of sex, entertainment and violence struck a chord with me, because it articulates exactly what I find repellent about a certain extreme of American - and increasingly British - culture. This is the way in which everything is packaged as entertainment. Sex has become entertainment through pornography. Violence has become entertainment through films and computer games. And pornography, violence and entertainment are the three things that characterise the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, in which sexual humiliation is used as a form of violence, and this violence - judging by the grins and thumbs-ups of the soldiers involved - is the greatest entertainment ever. The words in a Rage Against The Machine song, ‘a thin line between entertainment and war,’ sum this situation up succinctly. But the line, I think, has undoubtedly been crossed. Entertainment is war. War is entertainment. Turn on the TV at any hour of the day and you’ll see this. Surely this cannot help but have a brutalising effect on a society? And what about the extreme, explicit violence that typifies computer games? Is this obsession with blood, pain and gore really as harmless as we all make out? A few months after the invasion of Iraq, a war-game called ‘Shock And Awe’ was being proposed in America. That particularly revolted me, because it crosses the line from entertainment to reality, and turns people’s real suffering into a game. But is a ‘fictional’ game like Grand Theft Auto any different? Isn’t it just a part of the same disturbing process, sending out the same message: that human life means nothing whatsoever, and killing people - whether in a game or in reality - is not just easy, but fun?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of censorship, and I believe that the internet is the most important development to have taken place in democracy for a very long time. And I know that people have always been killing and humiliating one another, both in war and out of it, and seemingly enjoying it immensely. But something else in Aaronovitch’s article struck a chord with me: in responding to Sontag’s criticism of the West’s commercialisation of sex, he asks, ‘But who - an intelligent conservative might ask - championed sexual freedom if it wasn’t us on the liberal left? Who made films full of shocking violence and endless sex? ‘Didn’t the conservatives warn us that this would happen?’ This uncomfortable thought makes me question the ideal of freedom that I have always - as a left-leaning person - held sacred. Perhaps the liberal left does have a burden of responsibility for those photos of Abu Ghraib. I have always been accustomed to thinking of censorship as a form of oppression - and applaud writers like Genet, Ginsberg and Burroughs who fought off obscenity charge after obscenity charge in the name of artistic freedom - but maybe, after seeing those pictures, which I believe are in many ways the product of an increasingly amoral and degrading culture, I have to admit that something is wrong.
Is there such a thing as too much freedom? Conservatives and authoritarians have always said there is. In his novel Atomised, which charts the perceived disintegration of moral values from the 1960’s onwards, Michel Houllebeq explains how the mass-murderer Charles Manson is viewed by the American right as nothing if not the inevitable product of a social degeneration - characterised by freedom, free love, contempt towards Christianity and the law - that lost all control of itself. John Walker Lindh, the ‘American Taliban,’ is similarly seen by some as a typical unpatriotic California liberal who took too big a step over the line. I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I can see the logic; sometimes it is possible to take a good thing to a bad extreme. It also reminds me of Paul Bowles’ novel Let It Come Down, which charts one man’s discovery of personal freedom - first putting himself outside the law by stealing his employer’s money, then transcending reality itself through various revelations on hashish - and then the corruption of that discovery, as he takes his freedom too far and ends up horribly murdering his only friend for no other reason than a kind of idle curiosity, and a total inability to distinguish between right and wrong. This, again, is all about taking something too far and losing moral control in the process. Has the same thing been done with entertainment? Can we really blame the individual soldiers involved in this torture - or even their commanders - when pornography, violence and entertainment are so inextricably bound up in our society? Can we really blame the political right for the complete lack of moral control in its armies, when the liberal left has been breaking down these very same moral boundaries for the past forty years and shrieking with hysteria every time anyone suggests that making films or games about horrific violence might just have a negative effect on our culture? Have we taken freedom too far?
This isn’t a rhetorical question. It’s a real question, because I don’t know the answer and I am confused. What does anyone else think?
even some of the graphics on this site could be deemed to be entertaining - the image you have of the hooded prisoner standing on the box has been made to look snappy and the lettering is funky. the image has essentailly been made into the visual equivalent of a soundbite. easy to swallow, immediately resonant, but not nearly as shocking or as real as the photograph. the image was used and changed so that it communicated the fact that here was an interesting article that we really ought to read, and it also immediately made the connection, through the ironic stars and stripes lettering, between america and the prisoner abuses. the image was made pop. like what they’de done to Che Guevara.
Very true. That’s the problem with modern society though, isn’t it? As a child of modernity - raised on cheerios and transformers - I find it very hard to believe anything unless it’s on the BBC news, sung by The Clash, ripped to piss by Steve Bell or suspended in a tank of formaldehyde.
I am considering Scrutiny’s article deeply. Hopefully I will be able to return here with some kind of articulate response.
Dear Scroots, I had some thoughts on your article, not answers, just thoughts …
I was thinking about something similar in relation to ‘gun culture’, and the music of gun culture. People argue that it is daft to suggest a link between violent music and violent behaviour. First, it seems crazy to suggest that just because someone hears a piece of music about buying a gun and killing, they will go out, buy a gun, and kill. There are lots of people who listen to the music who don’t go out killing. Second, there are lots of other factors (social, economic, etc…) at work. What evidence is there to suggest that music is the most important? Third, the music that is being made reflects the culture: it doesn’t create it. There is truth in all of these statements, but I don’t think it’s the whole truth.
There is no doubt that art and culture influence people. I know for a fact that the way I think has been hugely influenced by some of the music I listen to. Looking at ‘modern music’, for example, there is something very tribal about it. People look to culture to inform them what they should be wearing, how they should be thinking. The people reflects the culture: the culture reflects the people. If people own guns, someone will start writing songs about owning guns. It will become become culturally ‘normal’.
When I sit down and write about something, it’s because I think it matters, and I want other people to think it matters. On the other hand, I am only responding to the culture in which I am immersed. It’s a kind of feedback loop, a dragon chewing its tail. A recursive algorithm constantly reprocessing itself. Culture is the mass agenda that sets the new mass agenda. Culture makes man in its own image: man repays the compliment.
I thought David Aaronovitch had a good point, if a little too simplistically made. There isn’t really a homogenous ‘liberal left’ in the way that he suggests. For example, the movement for ‘political correctness’ was driven by a liberal agenda in the sense that it attempted to take a more ‘open’ view of, amongst other things, the literary canon. In this sense, PC is ‘permissive’ because it assaults the straight white male monolith of culture. On the other hand, PC proscribes some words and works as ‘oppressive’, and demands that they be removed from common usage. Both of these thrusts spring from the idea that ‘culture’ (both in the sense of ‘art’ and in the everyday words people use) has a massive effect on thought and behaviour. Consequently, culture must be shaped carefully by a liberal elite to make sure that liberal values prevail. So in other words, the word ‘liberal’ is extremely problematic in this context, because you can’t really enfore liberalism!
We experience the world metaphorically. Almost everything we do involves manipulating symbols that stand for something else, whether we’re speding money, thinking, talking, singing … The grand aggregate of all these symbols is ‘culture’. People are basically cultural. It is what distinguishes us from animals.
I left a club at about 7 in the morning: a taxi picked me up. I was obviously a little worse for wear, having been thrashing around to acid techno for about 8 hours. The taxi driver had a beatiful long beard. He turned around in the seat and said with utter sincerity: “That music makes you evil” and then he drove me home.
It does occur to me that the world is becoming increasing homogenised. Fashion revolves in ever diminishing circles until the decades all merge into one summer collection. Chart music becomes mindless rehashes of old lyrics… Television unites every household with the same, lacklustre channels. Technology, television, is blurring society - reducing the boundaries. i think this compounds the issue as people strive for a new form of entertainment.
I’ve noticed a personal desensitisation just in the past couple of years. Sex on television would have embarrassed me; images of death would have made me sick. The other day it occurred to me i was no longer shocked to see the aftermath of a bomb.
I think knowledge is important, but i do think the boundaries are being forever pushed, and there will forever be people who will not question the ethics of it and continue to gorge on what they are fed - by the media, by the internet.
It’s hard to project what will be acceptable tomorrow… I’m not entirely sure it heralds a bright future…
(sorry… another humongous post: I’m bored at work, see?)
DEGENERATION
Since the Enlightenment, we’ve had a basic idea that humankind is ‘progressing’ (somewhere): that through art and science we are gradually improving. This found a biological parallel in Darwinism, which suggested that the natural state of things was improvement and refinement. However, this hit a bit of crisis in the late C19th. In 1880, Ray Lankaster published Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism. In it, he noted that parasites, organisms that necessarily postdate their hosts, are ’simpler and lower in structure’. In other words, it is possible for life-forms to get ’simpler’ and ‘lower’ in response to their environment. In 1895, Max Nordeau’s Degeneration proclaimed the end of civilisation; citing doctors who claimed that the European elite were characterised by ‘degeneracy’ and ‘hysteria’. Anxiety about the degeneration of mankind characterises novels like Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and H.G. Wells ‘The Time Machine’. So what I’m saying is that the West has been anxious about ‘degeneration’ (social, biological and moral) for some time.
I’m reading ‘Al Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern’ by John Gray at the moment. He notes that Al-Qaeda tend to be characterised in the West as ‘primitive’ and degenerate: they aim to ‘turn the clock back’, and undo the Enlightened progress that is being made by the West. According to Gray, this couldn’t be further from the truth: Al-Qaeda are typically modern, in the sense of a globalised, privatised force responding specifically to the global agenda. I can’t accurately summarise Gray’s argument here: he’s a very clever man.
What’s critical is the fact that the media characterise al-Qaeda as primitive and / or degenerate. This allows us automatically to assume a morally superior position, because we are more ‘evolved’ than them. They are literally a ‘lower life form’. This is the perpetual problem with the Enlightenment idea of progress: they allow us to determine who is more ‘progressed’. Let me reiterate: according to Enlightenment ideals, we are morally superior to al-Qaeda simply because we are more evolved. Thus, it is easy for us to justify killing civilians (collateral damage) because we are merely carrying out the Enlightenment program (bringing democracy, freedom, etc.) in order to assist their evolution.
So, to bring it back to the point. I am fascinated by the idea of the degenerate Californian who goes a step too far and starts killing. But at the same time, I am aware that people have always been anxious about ‘degeneration’, and used the concept to vilify people they don’t like.
(And if I hadn’t had this wonderful internet, I would have got a lot more done this afternoon: I am a dijenerut)
jus what ya sayin’ boy? yoo sayin ‘mericans ‘generat? boy, i’m gonna cuff yoo harder than Mistress Whiptease. daaangerous tertry. ve ry mur ky. i’m so mad i gone dribbled all down my mustash.
Hola. Some ponderings.
I think we have to be more exact when using the word freedom. It’s not what we have or we don’t, regardless of American speechwriters’ attempts to suggest otherwise. We have freedom of something (speech, movement), or from something (fear, hurt, although both of these are impossible to enforce), but not just freedom. The nearest I can think freedom means is implicitly freedom from enslavement.
As a result of this woolly use of freedom, the word comes to encompass anything from freedom of assembly to freedom to do whatever I like. This latter freedom is with an important caveat, one of the principles of liberal democracy. We have the idea that I am free to do what I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. The caveat is often forgotten, and becomes I’m free to do whatever I like, which is false, and pretty infantile. I think that possibly some of the freedom of the sexual revolution and making intensely violent filmaking is the false freedom to do what I want disguised and protected under the banner of freedom of speech/self-expression.
I’m not really sure if statements like people being a product of their culture are very useful. It sounds like a bit of a truism. Everyone is a product of their environment and their genes. What’s interesting is how the two interact, or if we’re just discussing culture, how cultural influences on a variety of levels affect what we do. We know they do, it’s how that’s important. There’s also an implication that these influences somehow control us and so links to responsibility. If we’re just products of our culture, we really have no responsibility for what we do or say. This makes me uneasy, and clashes strongly with our notions of free will.
I think it’s very interesting what you said about a message being sent out that killing people is not just easy but fun. I think this message is one that could well be true and social and political institutions have huge mechanisms to prevent us realsiing this. Hospitals keep checks on doctors, monitoring occurs of deaths, surgeons have to have psychological tests; all of these prevent people getting the chance to enjoy killing. War is a much more difficult area to fix as at tbe basis of warfare is that something that normally is immoral is now neutral. But we still put systems in place to prevent killing too much. Psychologists now check troops to prevent Apocalypse Now scenarios. In the hundreds years war there were bans on killing drummers or banner boys. The Art of War by Suz-Tzu tries to lay out rules of warfare. The Geneva Convention lists what you can and can’t do. These rules are to prevent too much slaughter, and from this some developing a taste for it. These measures certainly fail (what proportion I don’t know) but we still put them in place.
And we’ve done similar things with violent films. We restrict the age on watching, hoping that social pressures are already strong enough that the message doesn’t get through. We live in a world where killing is punished by law, if you’re religious by God, and if you’re deeply humanist by you. We’re repeatedly told that its wrong to kill. We’re also told that this can sometimes be circumvented, but its not up to us when this happens. We’re always told no, because we assume that we might want to do it. In some cases these ‘no’ systems break. Why?
So rather rambingly, I’ve come back to your original question u.s (what ironic initials!) is it really worth pushing these ‘no’ systems in the way we do given its effect on individuals and possibly society as a whole. And as well, why do we push them in the first place- is breaking a taboo because its there to be broken really worth it? Or is it worth saying because it’s true, unpleasent as that may be? This is maybe more justifiable if saying it is a means to an end, not a end in itself.
Mr Alabamaradartowers points out, rightly, that people have always found it tempting to see society in terms of a decline from perfection to corruption. Many religions - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, and Australian Aboriginal religions - gaze longingly back at a long-lost golden age, in which humanity verged on godliness, not only being spiritually purer but physically taller, stronger, more beautiful, and able to live hundreds of years longer. I think this sense of decline and degeneration is programmed into our psyches from a very early age. And more recently, too, Western societies have tended to see themselves as being increasingly under attack from outside barbarians determined to undermine their core values, a sort of harking back to the last glory days of Rome. TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, one of the major texts of modernism, for example, is obsessed with this idea of degenerate invasion, and this fear is reflected most blatantly today by Europe’s terror of being ’swamped’ and ‘flooded’ by asylum seekers, refugees, terrorists, migrants, gypsies, and other general brown-skinned menaces from the East. So maybe my own fears about cultural degeneration from INSIDE are nothing more than another manifestation of this old paranoia. I guess it’s important to remember that there never was any great golden age in which everything was lovely and perfect, and there never will be.
The law of entropy states that as time passes the amount of disorder in a system increases, it becomes more homogenizd and less sophisticated. So degeneration is a neccessary condition of any system.
It’s great when physics and cultural history collide.
is that like the jam and rice pudding thng - you can’t unstir what has already been stirred? universe cooling down blah blah .
Yep, its the jam thing.