Ugly

War is ugly, and war photography doesn’t seek to deny this. That very parable, present in CNN’s “Iraq Soldier” (pictured above), is part and parcel of a “myth” as Roland Barthes’ Myth Today would call it. Barthes’ myths are “depoliticized speech”, that is “the function of myth[s] …[are] to empty reality”; basically, they are systems which turns signs into signifiers, and in so doing, naturalizes concepts that society as a whole – or at least “bourgeois” society – embraces. On the surface, the picture of the soldier has its denoted, connoted, (and potentially even linguistic) messages. But if those ‘signifiers’ are then turned into signs, the ‘myth’ of the photo is born. That is, those things we look at and accept as being the unquestionable way of things.

Prominently, there are seven features to a myth: inoculation, history, identification, tautology, neither-norism, the quantification of quality, and the statement of fact. By exploring how the photo embodies all of these, a basic understanding of the image’s mythology appears.

First, the photo inoculates, that is, it “admit[s]… [an] accidental evil … the better to conceal …[a] principal evil.” Here, it is immediately acknowledged that ‘war is ugly’: buildings crumble, the gun menaces, and violence hangs in the air. These brutal elements pay surface respect and in doing so, ‘naturalize’ the image. Once viewers accept them, they never need question the ‘principle’ evil of “why war”?

Then, there is the matter of history. Barthes claims that “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory that they once were made.” The photo asks that we accept the solider. It does not ask for our judgment or politics. It lives very much in the now, in that there is no way it can conceive of a time before or after the snapshot.

The third principle, ‘identification’ is a myth’s ability to place everyone inside it (or give it a place around it), and allow everyone to associate. The American soldier is a warrior, a freedom fighter, etc. This photo gets deeply inside that myth. Indeed, many American soldiers work desk jobs, or have positions outside of the Middle East, but the mythology places them in danger, there.

The matter of ‘tautology’ (or, a “propositional formula that is true under any possible valuation”) is simple in naturalizing images. Since this photo depicts a soldier as he is (or, must have been at some point in the past), it can be accepted to be the way it is because it is. The reality of an Iraq soldier as photographed must be accepted, because it is reality. All alternative arguments are made impossible.

Neither-Norism in myth “consists in stating two opposites and balancing the one by the other so as to reject them both.” In the instance of the CNN picture, the viewer first looks at the solider, and says – perhaps – “this solider is violent, I reject his presence in Iraq as overbearing and an unnecessary use of force!” However, in looking at the destruction around the soldier, and knowing the alternative, says also “Al-Qaida is a terrible organization, and should be done away with: I protest allowing such things to proliferate!” In rejecting both possibilities proffered by the picture, the viewer then is free to accept the image as it is, thus naturalizing it.

Myth’s “quantification of quality” principle seeks to “economize intelligence”. In this image, the complex nature of the fight in Iraq, the multiplicities of jobs, problems, and options is reduced to the quality of a single picture so it can be easily comprehended and understood.

Lastly, the ‘myth’ of the CNN image can be understood as ‘myth’ because it contains a ‘statement of fact’. Myths tend to become proverbs, which tend to get adopted as common sense, so the statement “war is ugly” once more can be seen in the image, and as a part of its myth. It is natural for us to expect to see this accepted fact in a photo of war, and further leads to the overall cultural acceptance of it.

In the end, the myth of the CNN image may hold that “right” or “bourgeois” bent which Barthes claims is most common in myth, but is not actually a political statement. Because myth is not political. It seeks to create a reality that its audience feels is reality, whether that is the whole of the matter or not.