by BenJy! on Wed Dec 10, 2008 2:23 pm Huỳnh Công Út (a.k.a. Nick Ut) - The Consequences of Violence and Not Questioning Authority. Alan Downes & Joe McNally. The Cranberries - Zombie
Posted December 9, 2007
Photo by Huỳnh Công Út (a.k.a. Nick Ut).
” . . . an editor at the AP rejected the photo of Kim Phuc running down the road without clothing because it showed frontal nudity. Pictures of nudes of all ages and sexes, and especially frontal views were an absolute no-no at the Associated Press in 1972 . . . Horst argued by telex with the New York head-office that an exception must be made, with the compromise that no close-up of the girl Kim Phuc alone would be transmitted. The New York photo editor, Hal Buell, agreed that the news value of the photograph overrode any reservations about nudity. ” - Nick Ut
The above photo won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for Spot Photography. It is a photo that can be admired and evaluated on many levels:
On one level, it is a photo of Vietnamese children running, burned and injured from the recent napalm attack in the background. Kim Phuc, the girl most strikingly running naked in the street has been burned severely on her back and left arm.
The photo is known by at least 3 well known titles: “Terror of War,” “Vietnam Napalm,” and “Children Fleeing an American Napalm Strike.” All the titles invite multiple, different, and worthwhile interpretations of the image.
I want to emphasize I have shown the photo in its original composition. Often the photo is shown in a detail cropping that more centers on Kim Phuc (Phan Thi Kim Phúc). I think it’s valuable to notice that Nick Ut did not bulls-eye focus his composition on the young girl. Instead, compositionally the image is focused on ALL the children moving away from the destruction, both the Vietnamese children and the young soldiers.
The US soldiers appear somewhat haphazard and numb to the normality of violence. Compared to modern military body armor and gear, they also appear comparatively naked (less garmented and less protected).
I think when the US population studied this photo, they saw it not so much as one more horrific photo of the cruelty of the Vietnam War - I think they also saw it as a symbol of many people on both sides of the conflict moving away from the destructive actions. It didn’t matter what side of the ideological debates you were on, the photo suggested that things were going on that were wrong from any point of view.
The young Vietnamese children in the photo reveal their fears honestly. It’s interesting to me, the older soldiers in the photo appear to have become conditioned and jaded. Some have described the soldiers as indifferent, but I think that is inaccurate. Many US citizens, learning how severely Kim Phuc was burned, may have looked at the photo and thought, “Why are the soldiers not moving toward her to attend to her?” But as the pictures below show, that inference would have been incorrect.
Also at this scene was British cameraman Alan Downes, who recorded American soldiers immediately thereafter attending to Kim Phuc’s wounds and giving her water:
A video clip of the Alan Downes’ ITN footage can be found on YouTube here. I caution that the below video also sadly and tragically shows a more severely burned infant being carried away from the same napalm attack:
Here is a photo of Kim Phuc with her son many years later:
© Joe McNally.
I created this post to remind everyone of the realities of war that most of us do not have to regularly face. There is usually compassion and cruelty on both sides of almost every military action.
I want to remind people of the horrors that young soldiers are asked to endure incessantly both during their tours of duty and to carry with them in their unforgetting memories for the rest of their lives.
It did not surprise me when it was recently reported that 1 in 4 homeless people in the United States are Veterans. At a time when young men and women should be learning advanced critical thinking skills and methods of evaluating sources of authority, they are instead conditioned to focus on being proud, being an army of one, and being strong. When young men and women should be learning social negotiation skills, they are instead given more consistent positive feedback for following orders without questioning them. Soldiers are sometimes taught that to be loyal and subservient to a commanding soldier is a better ethical and moral position than to evaluate the quality of the orders or to notoriously question the orders they are given. I have trouble with militant priorities.
And I am empathetic to Veterans because many of them should have received better social training during that crucial formative time in their cognitive development. I don’t think we, as human beings, are mentally able to effectively handle the irreconcilable contradictions too many soldiers must face and live with the rest of their lives. My praise to all the mental health professionals working with Veterans of all nations to cope with these issues that no one, regardless of their level of education and training, could capably or easily reconcile.
Source:
http://sexualityinart.wordpress.com/200 ... es-zombie/
Again Pc gone mad...
