The August 9th cover of Time magazine is upsetting to see.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007...
It depicts a young woman who has been mutilated at the hands of her husband under the influence of the Taliban.
Horrific.
But I have a problem with this.
I cannot help but think that this woman’s pain is being exploited, for the purpose of justify the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. I cannot help but think that the unwritten subtext to this photo is “Why We Fight.â€
So let us be clear here.
While violence against women is a worldwide problem that MUST be combated on every front, in every nation is which it presents itself – Time Magazine’s choice of depicting this one singular victim, a victim of the very people we have declared our enemy in Afghanistan, cannot be seen as anything less than an attempt to elicit an emotional reaction to this horrific and explicit imagery - for political reasons.
Defenders of this editorial choice will reason that ‘right is right and wrong is wrong’ and a story such as this deserves to be told.
I would agree.
But as with all issues of journalistic integrity, sensationalism and the use of explicit imagery is a known lever for manipulating the hearts and minds of your audience, and in the case of this particular magazine cover we are forced to ask towards what end are they pushing these buttons? Why this victim at this time?
One can easily demonize a people through the use of explicit imagery. One could easily demonize the United States by depicting the horrific deaths of hundreds of thousands of people – as a result of the United States invasion of Iraq. One could easily show the charred bodies and dismembered limbs and pools of blood that are a regular part of the Iraqi experience since our intervention there. Time magazine could, on a weekly basis, publish these images as a reminder of the consequences of our choices, as Americans, to vote for leaders who send us to wars based on lies.
Time magazine could easily show us photos of U.S. veterans of wars, past and present, living in squalor in our very own veterans hospitals. They could CHOOSE to show us garish images of soldiers who have committed suicide in record numbers. They could make an editorial CHOICE to show us images of our soldiers who have been electrocuted in their showers as a result of the shoddy electrical work performed by independent contractors like Halliburton in Iraq. They could show us the images of torture that took place in Iraqi prisons that the US government has chosen to censor. They could show us the FACES of 9/11 first responders who are currently dying as a result of the neglect that our society has shown towards them. They could publish photos from hospital rooms filled with children missing arms and legs, as a result of U.S. predator attacks and bombing raids.
I am saddened by what I see on the cover of Time Magazine this week. I am deeply saddened for what happened to this woman. But I am also saddened by Time Magazine’s editorial choice in exploiting her.
