So, what is real? As a general rule we may argue the real is what we experience. However, modern technology has enabled us to experience anything, anytime wherever we choose. If we’re using a dialectic methodology then the real presupposes an unreal or imaginary. Therefore maybe it is easy to begin by discerning what can be classified as unreal. However I don’t believe this is particularly helpful, as it suggests that all events, histories, phenomena, etc. can be separated into two specific categories It does not account for the news reporting, which does not slot into a specific category, but rather may traverse the line between the two. Par example: Footage from Iraq.
We cannot argue the war is not occurring, however we cannot discern the particular politics behind the image we are being presented with. Theorists, including Felix Guattari, who I’m endeavouring to explore, suggests we can no longer resume the objectivity of the machine. Guattari believes we must acknowledge a “machinic subjectivity” (Guattari, 1995). He is not suggesting a sudden robotics sensibility has developed (or at least I don’t think he is), but the inability for any form of production to be considered impartial.
The footage produced by CNN presents us with a particular perspective, the US soldier firing the weapon. However, we do not see the aftermath of the gunfire. Therefore, as Lisa Parks argues does the event become abstract and remote. Is our potential for feeling limited by the manner, in which we experience war? How can we account for the tears in the cinema over Saving Private Ryan, and the relative apathy shown towards images shown on CNN. Furthermore, the ‘live’ images of war range from the standard military firestorm, to still photographs of dead bodies; each eliciting a different response.
Most of the reading suggests the potential for a ‘real’ to be experienced through the tele-visual medium. Guattari suggests,
“People have little reason to turn away from machines, which are nothing other than hyperdeveloped and hyperconcentrated forms of certain aspects of human subjectivity, and emphatically not those aspects that polarize people in relations of domination and power” (Guattari, 1995)
However, if we are able to rid the camera of the power relations, which currently dominate between producer and viewer, what will happen? Are we capable of experiencing these events through the television? By this I am suggesting, the distance established by the camera in wartime footage, which Parks elaborates upon, will always force the individual into a continual helplessness. Disrupting power relationships behind the camera can change perceptions. However, once an event has occurred we become obligatory viewers, and as John Ellis suggests “accomplices”.
Is the possibility of experiencing the real through the camera desirable?
