The Spectacle and Image of Disaster

The Spectacle and Image of Disaster

Thousands of shocked and injured people streaming out of the underground stations; thousands of cars jammed on their way out of the cities. Living in a media saturated world, in recent days we have been haunted by images of disaster, both natural and man-made. If there were not widespread self-censorship in the news, we would see much worse from the war in Iraq, and elsewhere.

Such images of terror become tools for propaganda, manipulated by terrorist, hostage taker, and politician. They replace reform, and real solutions to real problems. As orientalist scholar Oliver Roy observed last weekend in the Financial Times, the planners of terrorism, “don’t care about the Iraqi people, they make use of such conflicts. They want to do something spectacular that could be immediately understood by the masses.” The same is often true of the US government and its tabloid friends, sometimes for specific reasons of policy and profit, but often simply to feed the people’s fast food appetite for alarm, the deepening American addiction to anxiety and violence.

On Friday, we viewed the horrific images of the terror bombings in London. On Saturday, as Hurricane Dennis headed towards the US mainland, Cuban state authorities said hundreds of houses around Cuba's southeastern coast had been destroyed or heavily damaged, and civil defense officials said more than 1.5 million people had fled their homes. At least 100 people were missing in Haiti following floods, mudslides and the collapse of a bridge. And with considerably more noise and commentary, Americans also packed up and fled the gulf coast for higher ground.

What did I do in response? Maybe not the smartest thing! I went to the movies, to see War of the Worlds, a disaster movie about that other clash of civilizations— not Pakistanis and Palestinians, but Martians! The director Steven Spielberg cleverly and effectively manipulates the iconography of terrorism, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters to make such disaster seem very familiar and possible. The posters for missing friends and families; the ominous clouds; the aliens exploding out of the underground and creating an amazing and spectacular path of destruction through the cities. It is frightening, though the characters are rather simple. Indeed, one critic describes the story as, “millions die so that Tom Cruise can grown up.”

Insha’Allah millions will not have to die for Americans to grow up, for humanity to wake up— but I am pessimistic. We should not ignore the prospect of more violence. Accepting the inevitable with a tiny sigh and a shrug would be excessively fatalistic, and already the American image of Muslims is that we do not speak out in solidarity for all humanity. That discussion must wait for another time. But I do think that with cultural confusion and a perceived loss of control, that some of us hold on to traditions in the form of ideology, and may take wrong and extreme actions that will continue to escalate for the near future. Not only the aliens are alienated, after all.

We all have felt like strangers at times when we are no longer able to read the signs and messages of culture around us. The philosopher Wittgenstein observed that “one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with strange traditions…we do not understand the people. We cannot even find out feet with them.” Expanding on this, the Anthropologist Clifford Geertz describes this alienation as, “an inability, for lack of usable models, to comprehend the universe of civic rights and responsibilities in which one finds oneself located.” With reason and through religious practice, one may find ones’ way; insha’Allah. However, political and religion-based ideologies can also become projections of unacknowledged fears, disguises for political struggle, and sustain irrational images of utopia and magic solutions to the problems around us. They can mislead.

And we are misled. What Geertz calls, “The Dramaturgical state” plays out its ritual entertainments with Hollywood help. At the same time, around the world terror cells plan their own special effects. Graven images and idol worships proliferate in new media and in cyberspace. Capitalism has us counting calories and counting cell phone minutes; youth is wired, with cell phones in every ear—the Donnie Brasco generation. The streets are under surveillance. The Televisions everywhere flicker with images of the G-8 summit; a mix of utopian hopes and false promises, with President Bush again spoiling the results.

And here we are trapped in the light, disoriented like a moth indoors, seeking freedom outside, through window glass.