Will the Abundance of Footage of Political Unrest Desensitize Us?
March 23rd, 2008 — yelenaChina has provoked another flurry of online posts seething with disdain over its attempt to curtail open Internet access even further and blocking off access to YouTube, as well as other video/audio sharing sites, in the wake of protests in Tibet. This move comes just over a month after a new policy set in requiring “website operators [to] get a license before airing audio and video content”. Much of the coverage of the continued reinforcement of the “Great Firewall of China” seems to bring up the difficulties Chinese authorities—conscious of the need to control China’s image with the Beijing Olympics quickly approaching—face by the ease with which tourists and citizens can upload embarrassing footage. But over at the Chicago Tribune, an article suggests that the abundance of content may have the unintended consequence of desensitizing the public rather than invigorating it to mobilize for change.
Per the article, Rod Slemmons, director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago, “wonders” whether online content, because of its volume, will be as effective at inciting the public consciousness as the solitary photographs that once captured political unrest. At the very least, I think this brings up a question worth considering: does the sheer volume of footage that captured the recent riots, in Tibet or Myanmar, makes them less likely to galvanize the public than the picture of the solitary man standing in front of the oncoming tanks in Tiananmen Square? Would hours of coverage have etched the devastation that napalm caused into the collective memory the way that a single photo did?
While reading article, my brain couldn’t help but connect it to Stalin’s notorious comment, that “The death of one man is a tragedy [while] the death of millions is a statistic.”
Ostensibly, it makes sense that having a common visual referent connects people and helps them mobilize. But I’m not sure that merely because an abundance of footage is available, that it means that one particular video or photograph won’t become ingrained into the collective consciousness because of its extraordinary effect on viewers. As far as I know, there were thousands of photographs taken during the Vietnam War by war photographers and eventually made available through newspapers, journals, and books. Yet the impact that Slemmons seems to be referring to came from the handful of photographs that rose out of that abundance and are now etched into our collective memory.
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