05.03.2008: Objective Truth

I saw Errol Morris’s film Standard Operating Procedure, the “documentary” about the Abu Ghraib photos. I have the term documentary in quotes because, as the interviewees describe past events, the film re-enacts scenarios not filmed or photographed at the time.  For some, these re-enactments are a problem, as documentary convention prescribes a style and logic that, in most cases, simulates truth telling and objectivity. Many assume that in documentaries, the camera is a mute witness to “facts” and “events” and any interference or fictional techniques or touches destroys this, well, myth.

The re-enactments do not adhere to the form typical of those criminal investigation TV shows, which recreate the crime scenes with actors, out of focus, slow-motion shots, and voiceover narration.  Instead, Morris employs fragmentary images: a close up of snarling dog, its teeth lunging at the camera; a close up of skin covered in swarming ants; and most expensive, a helicopter exploding above our heads, the flaming parts descending on the camera.

It should be obvious that all documentary filmmakers have an agenda they hope to put forward. I’m not talking about Michael Moore and Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, The Smartest Guys in the Room) who obviously have a polemic to deliver, but about the countless docs, TV shows, news reports and educational pieces that evince a style that says, “We don’t have a point of view. We’re simply recording what’s in front of the camera and you make up your own mind.”

These ostensibly objective works invoke specific filmic devices that audiences have come to accept and recognize as indicators of truth telling and impartiality. Upon examining these “unbiased” films, we may sense their deep, inherent agendas, but for the most part, the style masks the filmmakers’ underlying prejudices, and we buy into it.

In a sense then, fiction films are also just recording what’s in front of the camera, but in their case, it happens to be costumed actors staging events. Fiction films are documentaries of the performances of actors.

Next, I watched Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA, an incredible, award-winning documentary about a violent mine strike in Kentucky. It took her four years to make the film, which she originally intended to be about something related, though different. It’s obvious that Kopple was embedded with the miners. During some particularly violent confrontations, the camera is clearly on the “side” of the striking miners, as scabs and corporate toadies take shots at them. The filmmaker hung with the mining families and otherworldly community in these hollers in order to secure some of the intimate details. Upon release, the film was an exposé, drawing attention to lives and injustices that otherwise would have been ignored.

Likewise, as Errol Morris and some of his interviewees point out, the photos taken at Abu Ghraib are responsible for drawing attention to the prison’s systemic practice of abuse. Had these photos never surfaced, the whole situation would have been swept under the rug, as was the violent, habitual torture practiced by the CIA and MI, never photographed. Since these practices can’t be proven, most media outlets pretty much ignore them. To paraphrase one of the film’s talking heads: ‘These photos made the President of the United States have to apologize to the world, so someone was going to pay.’ Unsaid, although implicit, is that those who caused the embarrassment to Bush would pay over those responsible for setting up a situation where abusive behaviors were condoned and encouraged.

Morris doesn’t broach the “Chain of Command” issues Seymour Hersh examines in his book of the same title.  Hersh carefully traces the legal maneuvers of Gonzales and the policies of the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush tripartite, effectively encouraging and excusing torture and anything goes behavior.

The film details the fascinating use of forensics to establish accurate information about the photographs.  Metadata embedded within the digital images is extracted and cross-referenced to handwritten logs to recreate a timeline, and uncover who took the pictures and with what camera. Morris limits the focus to the Americans, not the Iraqis. Some interviewees have the look of those whose experiences have twisted and mangled their souls deeply. They seem haunted and possessed.  Especially the young women, former innocents who, like characters out of some horror movie, were fucked over by some invisible, monstrous entity.

So maybe the film is not a documentary in the accepted sense, or maybe we must realize that docs are not exactly what they appear to be. At any rate, by examining a set of infamous photos, how they came to be, who authored them, and how they survived, Morris creates a meditation on the meaning and reception of images—particularly news images—in our culture at large. 

As these photos are reexamined, one can’t help but wonder whether a people often rounded up, imprisoned and tortured for no reason—many prisoners are simple cab drivers and local shopkeepers—will keep their grudges and desire for revenge close. And of course, one wonders whether a terrible price will be paid somewhere down the line.  George Bush might be dead by then, Cheney will surely be gone soon—he’s running on watch batteries as it is—but some naïve and “innocent” generation will pay for our current government’s policies and actions and wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?”