Society
A genre that's had its day?
Published 03 May 2004
Observations on the photo opportunity
The first photographs didn't appear in newspapers until the 1880s, and the photo opportunity as we know it is even more recent. Should we now be writing its epitaph?
To mark Earth Day in April, George W Bush was in the Everglades promising to conserve "Florida's natural beauty" and, complete with work gloves and pruning shears, was hacking away at the encroachments of the invasive earleaf acacia. The National Environmental Trust called it a "swing-state photo op", but that may be an understatement, as there was also a strong whiff of the absurd. The Natural Resources Defence Council has detailed more than 150 destructive actions by the Bush administration over the past year and says US environmental laws face "a fundamental threat more sweeping and dangerous than any since the dawn of the modern environmental movement". As images go, that of Bush masquerading as a hands-on greenie is about as likely as Gilles de Rais (aka Bluebeard) kissing a baby or Attila the Hun performing a topping-out ceremony.
What, exactly, is a photo opportunity? Is it Tony Blair holding an Iraqi child in his arms after the invasion? Or was that a genuine "event"? What about the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue or the pictures of British troops fraternising with shoppers in the markets in Basra? Stage-managed theatre or real news? Merely asking such questions shows the extent to which news - and, by extension, history - can be regarded not as disembodied and objective fact, but as somebody's agenda. Which usually means the agenda of the rich and powerful.
A photo opportunity is part of the iconography of power. But it is also a kind of dramatic convention, involving a suspension of disbelief. We know, if we choose to think about it, that there must have been contrivance in the juxtaposition of Blair and the Iraqi child but we are too busy or lazy or trusting to think - and the image lingers in our minds. To the extent that it does so, it could be said to work.
Aesthetic genres should not strain trust or credibility too far, however. Some people cannot stomach opera for that reason. Cowboy films have had their day. TV sitcoms may be going the same way, towards exhaustion and oblivion. The same may well apply to photo ops - part of a rupturing relationship between rulers and the ruled. George Bush would clearly be happier turning the Everglades into condos than defending them against the earleaf acacia. Conventions that become caricatures are on the way out - and so, maybe, are politicians who can't see that.
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