Censorship and ‘Truth”
This lecture considers notions of „truth‟ in the context of Fine Art and the Media, and in particular photography. It will consider the indexical qualities associated with photography and the rendering of „truth‟, which has led to the oft-quoted but flawed cliché that „the camera never lies‟, which has to a large degree been undermined by the possibilities of digital manipulation, however the lecture will show that this is in fact nothing new and has long been possible with analogue (film) photography.
Thus the „truth‟ shown in photography has often been manipulated for a particular purpose, and perhaps most importantly for political propaganda. Within this, it will also consider the versions of the „truth‟ we are allowed to see in the media, i.e. what is kept hidden from us for political reasons.
Jean Baudrillard has considered that in contemporary history, this has gone even further, or almost been reversed to the extent that wars are not as they have been in the past, but are in fact timed and organised in order to be viewed as media events.
Jean Baudrillard and The Gulf War did not take place
“It is a masquerade of Information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the
image” Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did not Take Place, 1995, p.40
„It is the de-intensified state of war, that of the right to war under the green light of the UN and with an abundance of precautions and concessions. It is the bellicose equivalent of safe sex: make war like love with a condom! On the Richter scale, the Gulf War would not even reach two or three. The build up is unreal, as though the fiction of an earthquake were created by manipulating the measuring instruments‟. Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 233
„Two intense images, two or perhaps three which all concern disfigured forms or costumes which correspond to the masquerade of this war: the CNN journalists with their gas masks in the Jerusalem studios; the drugged and beaten prisoners repenting on the screen of Iraqi TV; and perhaps that seabird covered in oil and pointing its blind eyes to the Gulf sky. It is a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image, the image of an unintelligible distress. No images of the field of battle, but images of masks, of blind or defeated faces, images of falsification. It is not war taking place over there but the disfiguration of the world‟ Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 241
„The claim that the Gulf War of 1990 would not take place (1991), followed by the assertion that it did not take place, seems to defy all logic. Such statements are anticipated by the earlier claim (1983) that the only future war would be a hyperreal and dissuasive war in which no events would take place because there was no more space for actual warfare. The underlying argument is that the Gulf War was a simulated war or a reproduction of a war. Whatever its human consequences, this was, for Baudrillard, a war which consisted largely of its self-representation in the real time of media coverage‟ Macey, D. (2000), The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, London, Penguin, page 34
Baudrillard on Simulacra and Simulations
„Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or relativity: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth it is the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra‟
This lecture considers notions of „truth‟ in the context of Fine Art and the Media, and in particular photography. It will consider the indexical qualities associated with photography and the rendering of „truth‟, which has led to the oft-quoted but flawed cliché that „the camera never lies‟, which has to a large degree been undermined by the possibilities of digital manipulation, however the lecture will show that this is in fact nothing new and has long been possible with analogue (film) photography.
Thus the „truth‟ shown in photography has often been manipulated for a particular purpose, and perhaps most importantly for political propaganda. Within this, it will also consider the versions of the „truth‟ we are allowed to see in the media, i.e. what is kept hidden from us for political reasons.
Jean Baudrillard has considered that in contemporary history, this has gone even further, or almost been reversed to the extent that wars are not as they have been in the past, but are in fact timed and organised in order to be viewed as media events.
Jean Baudrillard and The Gulf War did not take place
“It is a masquerade of Information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the
image” Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did not Take Place, 1995, p.40
„It is the de-intensified state of war, that of the right to war under the green light of the UN and with an abundance of precautions and concessions. It is the bellicose equivalent of safe sex: make war like love with a condom! On the Richter scale, the Gulf War would not even reach two or three. The build up is unreal, as though the fiction of an earthquake were created by manipulating the measuring instruments‟. Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 233
„Two intense images, two or perhaps three which all concern disfigured forms or costumes which correspond to the masquerade of this war: the CNN journalists with their gas masks in the Jerusalem studios; the drugged and beaten prisoners repenting on the screen of Iraqi TV; and perhaps that seabird covered in oil and pointing its blind eyes to the Gulf sky. It is a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image, the image of an unintelligible distress. No images of the field of battle, but images of masks, of blind or defeated faces, images of falsification. It is not war taking place over there but the disfiguration of the world‟ Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 241
„The claim that the Gulf War of 1990 would not take place (1991), followed by the assertion that it did not take place, seems to defy all logic. Such statements are anticipated by the earlier claim (1983) that the only future war would be a hyperreal and dissuasive war in which no events would take place because there was no more space for actual warfare. The underlying argument is that the Gulf War was a simulated war or a reproduction of a war. Whatever its human consequences, this was, for Baudrillard, a war which consisted largely of its self-representation in the real time of media coverage‟ Macey, D. (2000), The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, London, Penguin, page 34
Baudrillard on Simulacra and Simulations
„Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or relativity: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth it is the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra‟
„Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation,
simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. These would
be the succesive phases of the image:
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press
Censorship in Art
Amy Adler – The Folly of Defining ‘Serious’ Art
Adler is a Professor of Law at New York University and recognises „an irreconcilable conflict
between legal rules and artistic practice‟.
She suggests that the requirement that protected artworks have „serious artistic value‟ is the very thing contemporary art and postmodernism itself attempt to defy
The Miller Test (1973) asks three questions to determine whether a given work should be labelled „obscene‟, and hence denied constitutional protection:
Aronson, E. and Pratkanis, A., 1992, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, New York, Henry Holt & Co.
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press
Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press Hawthorne C. and Szanto, A. (eds.) (2003) The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to free expression in the Arts, New York, Columbia University Arts Journalism Program
Naas M. (2010) The Truth in Photography, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press
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It is the reflection of a basic reality.
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It masks and perverts a basic reality.
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It masks the absence of a basic reality.
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It bears no relation to any reality whatever : it is its own pure simulacrum.‟
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press
Censorship in Art
Amy Adler – The Folly of Defining ‘Serious’ Art
Adler is a Professor of Law at New York University and recognises „an irreconcilable conflict
between legal rules and artistic practice‟.
She suggests that the requirement that protected artworks have „serious artistic value‟ is the very thing contemporary art and postmodernism itself attempt to defy
The Miller Test (1973) asks three questions to determine whether a given work should be labelled „obscene‟, and hence denied constitutional protection:
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Whether „the average person, applying contemporary community standards‟ would
find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
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Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct
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Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or
scientific value
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„To protect art whilst prohibiting trash‟
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„The dividing line between speech and non-speech‟
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„The dividing line between prison and freedom‟
Aronson, E. and Pratkanis, A., 1992, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, New York, Henry Holt & Co.
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press
Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press Hawthorne C. and Szanto, A. (eds.) (2003) The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to free expression in the Arts, New York, Columbia University Arts Journalism Program
Naas M. (2010) The Truth in Photography, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press
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