Narratives of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ and the Power of Visual Representations: A Study of Different Portrayals of Refugees in Documentary Film

(1)

Narratives of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ and the Power of Visual

Representations: A Study of Different Portrayals of Refugees

in Documentary Film

MA Thesis in European Studies - Identity and Integration track

Graduate School for Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Author: Alina-Ramona Bejan

Student number: 10792589

Main Supervisor: Dr. Guido Snel

Second Supervisor: Prof. dr. Joep Leerssen

June, 2020

(2)

List of Figures

1 1 ‘A Four-Dimensional Conceptualization of the Mediatisation of Politics’ 20

2 Samuele with his slingshot, training his lazy eye

34 3 The setting of the film: the island Lampedusa

35 4 The Mediterranean Sea seen from one of Lampedusa’s cliff coasts

36 5 Samuele on his father’s boat, feeling seasick

37 6 The title of the film as it appears at the end written in the symbolical

colours: red (for fire) and blue (for water/sea)

38 7 Dr. Bartolo getting emotional while talking about the gravity of the

situation

40 8 The room of Zia Maria, Pippo’s aunt

42 9 Migrants remembering their exodus, sharing their testimony, and giving

thanks to God

43 10 Close-up on a migrant’s face

45 11 Medium shot of Samuele and his father

45 12 Long shot of ship 490, the Cigala Fulgosi and its helicopter

preparing for flight

46 13 High-angle shot: view from the helicopter showing the vastness of the

sea in comparison to the tiny boat of migrants

46 14 Low-angle shot: perspective on the sky

47 15 Ai’s installation of life jackets used by refugees draped around the

pillars of Berlin’s Konzerthaus in 2016. Potograph: Kay Nietfeld/EPA

53 16 The film poster taken from its official Facebook page

55 17 On-screen text

55

1 Unless stated otherwise, all images are screenshots of scenes from the three films analysed:

Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016), Human Flow (Ai Weiwei, 2017), and Refuge (Matthew

(5)

18 Fragment of a famous Syrian poem

56 19 Weiwei having a haircut

57 20 Weiwei giving a haircut

57 21 Girls talking about the difficulties of living in Gaza

59 22 Group of migrants clapping and singing

60 23 Mahmoud and Weiwei exchanging passports

60 24 Ismatollah Sediqi telling Weiwei about his family

61 25 A Kurd man sitting next to what is left of his house after the Turkish

military’s crackdown in 2015

62 26 Interview with Diana Firas, Princess of Jordan

62 27 Two brothers crying in the agitation of a night

63 28 Discarded life jackets

63 29 Medium close-up: the subject is framed from the shoulders up

64 30 Medium shot of a woman in a tent

65 31 Full shot of mother and child

65 32 Long shot in Iraq

66 33 Extreme long shot in Iraq

66 34 Low-angle shot of the Hungarian agents

67 35 High-angle shot

67 36 On-screen text

72 37 The US/Mexico wall

72 38 Dead body lying on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq

74 39 One of the refugees interviewed, single mother of two daughters

77 40 Drone shot of Homs in ruins and on-screen text

77 41 The migrants’ words as they appear on a beautiful shot of the sea

78 42 The image that appears while the Mayor of Lesvos speaks of hope

78

(6)

Abstract

This thesis discusses the meaning and the forms of representation, as well as self-representation, in relation to refugees. Representation can take the form of text, speech, photographs, TV news – all shared by the (social) media, as well as films and documentaries. When examining a representation, it is crucial to look at who is representing, who is being represented, what is the purpose of the representation, and how is the representation constructed. Using various media theories, this thesis suggests that representations are constructed or regulated in order to fit a political agenda and to create a separation between ‘us’ (Western/European audience) and ‘them’ (the ‘Others’). This consequently leads to a lack of interest in the events and tragedies that are happening ‘there’ and to a spectacle of distant suffering. Moreover, employing Spivak’s theory of the subaltern, this thesis establishes that the refugee is a silenced victim, deprived of any agency. While refugee voices are very rarely heard in the media, documentary films are more likely to allow refugees to speak for themselves in front of the camera. This thesis observes that voice and voicelessness have a big impact on representations, namely speaking or not speaking subjects create different representations and can influence a film’s narrative. Specifically, a refugee’s self-representation is more likely to arouse empathy in the public, while a self-representation of voiceless refugees is more prone to cause compassion fatigue.

Keywords: (refugee) representation, (refugee) self-representation, refugee crisis,

(7)

Chapter 1

Introduction

According to the data provided by UNHCR, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, out of which 41.3 million are internally displaced people, 25.9 million refugees, and 3.5 million asylum-seekers.2 The same source states that over half of the 25.9

million refugees have not yet reached the age of 18 and that this is the highest number of refugees ever recorded.3 2015 has brought the worst refugee crisis in recent times with more

than 3,770 migrants dying while trying to cross the Mediterranean, aiming to reach their destination: Europe.4 Media performed a crucial role in framing the events of 2015-16, which

were phrased as the European ‘refugee/migration crisis,’ being the main source of information for both European citizens and policymakers.

Wright argues that ‘[t]he visual representation of refugees plays an essential, yet neglected, role in forming the stereotype of “the refugee”.’5 In the news, the refugees were

spoken about, but their own voices were rarely heard. This led to depicting the refugee as a silent victim. Pictures of refugees abounded in media in 2015 and in the years to follow and it is unlikely that by now, someone has not come across such a picture. This means that most, if not all of us, know what the refugee crisis looks like in pictures, but do we know how this crisis is perceived by those migrants themselves? Do we see what they see? While we have seen numerous portrayals of refugees and their tragedies from afar, as they were depicted in images, how many individual stories have we heard of? Whereas many pictures of refugees appeared in newspapers, on social media, on television, not much information was provided about who these people were. Based on the framing theory, media depictions can significantly affect public opinions and attitudes towards immigration.6 Besides that, media is constantly creating

2 United Nations, ‘Figures at a Glance,’ UNHCR, accessed June 4, 2020,

https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.

3 Ibid.

4 IOM, ‘Over 3,770 Migrants Have Died Trying to Cross the Mediterranean to Europe in 2015,’

accessed June 4, 2020, https://www.iom.int/news/over-3770-migrants-have-died-trying-cross-mediterranean-europe-2015.

5 Terence Wright, ‘Moving Images: The Media Representation of Refugees,’ Visual Studies 17,

no. 1 (2002): 53.

6 For more information on this, check Chauzy, Jean-Philippe and Gervais Appave,

‘Communicating effectively about migration,’ in Reporting at the Southern borders:

Journalism and public debates on immigration in the US and the EU, edited by Giovanna

(8)

and reproducing frames through which they are emphasising certain aspects of an event, while omitting others.7 It has been observed that media coverage of the refugee crisis tends to omit

direct representation of individual immigrants.8 By the time of the publication of the Refugees

Reporting project (2017), only 21% of the news on asylum and migration referenced a refugee

or a migrant, and out of that 21%, only 40% of the published articles actually quoted them directly.9 In this sense, these migrants were not given a voice to represent themselves.

Moreover, a report from the Council of Europe published in the same year, found that only 62% of the articles provided information about the migrants’ countries of origin, 35% referred to the refugees in terms of men or women, less than 15% attached an age to their subjects, only 16% included names, and merely 7% mentioned their professions.10 In this way, media

illustrations of refugees have led to the objectification of these migrants, who were presented as an unidentified, unskilled mass of people, who inspired little sympathy because of the dehumanising way in which they were represented (faceless, nameless, no details regarding identity, no personal story), and who raised suspicion and unease, as people usually fear the unknown.

When migrant groups do appear in the media, they are often depicted in a negative way. The degree to which migrants are subjected to othering depends on the type of immigration (legal or illegal) and on a scale of cultural differences (culturally close or distant). Constant exposure to negative news about refugees can lead to the creation of a negative public opinion and attitude towards this group, which consequently can motivate them to support anti-immigration parties, which are getting more and more predominant in Europe today. Thus, the acceptance and integration of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers may partly depend on the ways in which mass media represent them, and negative coverage of these groups of people

7 Check for example Claes H. De Vreese (2005) and Robert M. Entman (1993).

8 Jakob-Moritz Eberl, et al., ‘The European media discourse on immigration and its effects: a

literature review,’ Annals of the International Communication Association 42, no. 3 (2018): 207-223.

9 Francesca Pierigh and Sara Speicher, ‘Changing the Narrative: Media Representation of

Refugees and Migrants in Europe.’ (Refugees Reporting, 2017): 1-50, https://www.refugeesreporting.eu/report/.

10 Myria Georgiou and Rafal Zaborowski, ‘Media Coverage of the “Refugee Crisis”: A

Cross-European Perspective,’ Council of Europe Report, (COE, 2017), 10,

https://edoc.coe.int/en/refugees/7367-media-coverage-of-the-refugee-crisis-a-cross-european-perspective.html.

(9)

impedes their integration.11 Moreover, comparing media monitoring findings of Refugees

Reporting12 to national public opinions13 illustrates that in countries where refugee voices are

present in the media citizens are less likely to be supporters of anti-migration policies. This proves that media representations and refugees’ self-representation are crucial in forming public opinions and attitudes towards migration and have the potential to construct narratives.

Nonetheless, there seems to be a paradox in the representation of refugees in the media caused by the ambivalent depictions of asylum-seekers as harmless innocent victims in need of help, while at the same time, as dangerous invaders threatening Europe’s economy, security, and its culture. These are two contrasting frames used by the media, which create confusion and feelings of panic and fear. Xenophobia is thus also caused by the fact that the public cannot be certain of which of the two scenarios is real, and in order to protect themselves, they start believing the only leaders who seem to be certain of the situation: the far-right politicians who spread the message that migrants are dangerous. Greussing & Boomgaarden identify three types of framing of refugees and asylum-seekers in mass media, according to which they are either represented as ‘passive victims, as threat to the culture, security and welfare of the host country, or as dehumanised, anonymous (out-)group.’14 This classification is certainly

accurate, but I would like to add that there are instances when refugees do get the chance to speak in the media and are thus given a voice. The problem is that this voice is small and not listened to, as refugees have no say in the process of asylum- and migration-related policymaking.

Desiring to explore these narratives of the refugee crisis, as well as the role and impact of representation, I will analyse three documentary films about refugees, namely Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea (2016), Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow (2017), and Matthew K. Firpo’s Refuge (2016). While there are multiple documentaries covering the refugee crisis, the reasons why I have chosen these three films are the following. Firstly, these documentaries have been very successful, having reached a wide audience due to the directors’ popularity and the urgency of the subject matter in the eyes of a Western/European audience. According to IMDb, Fire at

11 As shown by Christian Schemer in ‘The Influence of News Media on Stereotypic Attitudes

toward Immigrants in a Political Campaign,’ Journal of Communication 62, no. 5 (2012): 739– 757.

12 Pierigh and Speicher, ‘Changing the Narrative,’ 1-50.

13 Neli Esipova et al., ‘How the World Views Migration’ (International Organization for

Migration, 2015), 1-59, https://publications.iom.int/system/files/how_the_world_gallup.pdf.

14 Esther Greussing and Hajo G. Boomgaarden, ‘Shifting the refugee narrative? An automated

frame analysis of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43, no. 11 (2017): 1751.

(10)

Sea has been nominated for 39 categories within 23 different film festivals and awards, winning

14 of them. It received the Golden Berlin Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival,

the European Movie of the Year award at the 21st Capri, Hollywood International Film Festival,

and it was nominated for the Oscars in 2017.15 According to the same source, Human Flow

was nominated for 18 categories, and it won 6 of them.16 Out of 170 documentaries, Human

Flow was selected in top 15 contenders for Best Documentary at the Oscars.17 Refuge is a short

documentary created as part of the Refuge Project and winner of Best Short Documentary at the Oxford Film Festival in Mississippi and of Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2017.18 Secondly, the directors come from different backgrounds which influence the way they

perceive the refugee crisis and can lead to different representations of it. Thirdly, for the purpose of comparison and for providing a more complex analysis, the three documentaries differ in style, focus, aim, mode, and in the level of interaction with the refugees, which allows for different degrees of refugee self-representation. Most importantly, this thesis discusses the power of representation and self-representation, aiming to illustrate that each has a different effect on an audience and each can contribute to shaping either positive or negative attitudes regarding migration. In this regard, in trying to show how refugees are portrayed in the media and primarily in documentaries, I will address the following sub-questions:

1. What cinematic techniques are used for addressing the issue of the refugee crisis? And are these techniques successful in creating and distributing an impactful message? 2. To what extent is the (limited) self-representation of refugees in these films important

in breaking stereotypes and changing the existing narratives?

3. Do the documentaries succeed in giving the refugees a voice? Does their participation extend beyond the films or is it limited to the films only?

4. Who and what is represented or omitted? Who is doing the representation? 5. What is the broader political effect of these representations?

15 IMDb, ‘Fuocoammare,’ (IMDb.com), accessed June 27, 2020,

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3652526/awards?ref_=tt_ql_op_1.

16 IMDb, ‘Human Flow,’ (IMDb.com), accessed June 27, 2020,

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6573444/awards.

17 Paula Rösler, ‘Ai Weiwei's Film “Human Flow” Makes Oscar Shortlist,’ DW.COM,

December 8, 2017, accessed June 4, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/ai-weiweis-film-human-flow-makes-oscar-shortlist/a-41713580.

18 IMDb, ‘Refuge,’ (IMDb.com), accessed June 4, 2020,

(11)

Chapter 2

Methodology

This paper does not have within its scope a study of histories, empirical cases, or individual experiences. Specifically, this is not a social science paper as I am not conducting interviews or field surveys but do qualitative research instead in order to provide a deeper understanding of how and why certain representations are being developed and shed some light upon the implications these representations have. In trying to destroy the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ divide by means of representation, I believe individual stories told in front of a recording camera are more impactful than a text or a picture alone. For this reason, I have chosen to analyse documentaries that provide a fuller narrativization and visualisation of the refugee crisis as experienced by the refugees themselves. Some documentaries show migration in an abstract general way focusing on the masses of people, while others focus on the individuals and offer refugees the possibility to talk. This is significant because telling one’s own story is a sign of agency that refugees are usually robbed of in the media. Since visual images have the ability to create new discourses,19 I argue that audio-visual texts (films) can create new

narratives or change the existing ones. While the analysis of media coverage of the refugee crisis could be interesting for several important reasons – understanding populism, analysing the policymaking process and the origins of hate speech against refugees, etc. – this thesis will mainly discuss narratives of the so-called European ‘refugee crisis’ that emerge from the ways in which these events were and continue to be illustrated. Drawing on Spivak’s theory of the subaltern, this research project also explores the concept of the voiceless subaltern in the context of the migration crisis.

While news spread through the radio are efficient, newspapers and television combine text with pictures in order to make a story more powerful, effective, and catchy. Documentaries are powerful because they present a fuller story, using both text and audio-visual content. Seeing pictures illustrating the terrible situations that refugees actually face can be more impactful than simply reading about them. On the 2nd of September 2015, Nilüfer Demir’s

picture of the lifeless body of a Syrian three-year-old boy started circulating around the world. The picture was selected for the Time Magazine ‘Top Photos of 2015’. On their website, the magazine describes the image as ‘the defining photograph of an ongoing war that […] had

(12)

killed some 220,000 people’20 by the time the picture was taken. The description adds that the

photograph ‘was not taken in Syria, a country the world preferred to ignore, but on the doorstep of Europe, where its refugees were heading.’21 Moreover, they note that as a result of this

image, European governments were suddenly convinced they had to open their closed frontiers, which they eventually did (but not for long). This incident proves that once the victim is given a name and a personal story, the public tends to be more emphatic, compassionate, and interested. However, while a picture is worth a thousand words and can be as impactful as to change governmental decisions, pictures without text can be misleading. Because of this I have decided to combine pictures with text and sound and analyse nonfiction films instead.

The method used in this research project is content analysis of audio-visual text. More specifically, I will analyse the documentary films in terms of semiotic analysis (signs and symbols, metaphors, analogies, symbolism), narrative structure analysis (plot structure, characters, theme), contextual analysis (analysis of the film in a broader context, culture, time), mise-en-scène22 analysis (arrangement of compositional elements in film: setting, décor, depth

of space, lighting and colour, props), camera work (distance, angle, movement), editing, sound (audio elements and their purpose), and production contexts (who funded the films and how this affects narratives). The analysis is meant to depict and illustrate the narratives about refugees that are created and distributed by these films. Moreover, drawing on Spivak’s theory of the subaltern, the analysis also aims to highlight some issues about the representation of refugees and refugees’ self-representation. For that purpose, this thesis will also address questions regarding the refugees’ involvement in the post-production processes and in the media events around the films, which implies that there will be a brief discussion about extra-textual aspects too, linking the subject of my thesis to a broader context.

20 Time, ‘Alan Kurdi | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time,’ accessed

June 4, 2020, http://100photos.time.com/photos/nilufer-demir-alan-kurdi.

21 Ibid.

(13)

Chapter 3

Theoretical Framework

3.1 The Refugee

Refugee and migration flows are caused by political, economic, and social factors, and sometimes a combination of all these. Most often, people leave their homes because of war and violence, either caused by ethnic conflicts, political change, and/or decaying economic conditions. In fact, ‘it seems to be the interaction of economic and political factors which has generated most of the world’s refugees.’23 But who is a refugee? The 1951 Refugee Convention

sets the definition of a refugee as follows:

As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.24

As the convention acknowledges, refugees are people who are in danger in their home country, and who leave their countries because of fear of being persecuted for different reasons: race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, affiliation with specific groups (for example IPOB -Indigenous People of Biafra, fighting for the freedom of Biafrans from under Nigerian rule). As British-Somali poet Warsan Shire powerfully highlights in her poem Home, ‘you have to understand, / no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land.’25

Refugees choose to flee ‘when fearing they would be exiled or imprisoned if they did not leave.’26 Many also fear they will be killed if they stay. In the context of the European ‘refugee

crisis’, refugees are people coming from the south and east of Europe, who seek shelter in

23 Elizabeth G. Ferris, Beyond Borders: Refugees, Migrants and Human Rights in the

Post-Cold War Era (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993), 70.

24 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Convention relating to the Status of

Refugees, accessed 29 January 2020,

https://web.archive.org/web/20120607013438/http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/refugees.ht m.

25 ‘“Home” by Warsan Shire,’ Facing History and Ourselves, accessed June 28, 2020,

https://www.facinghistory.org/standing-up-hatred-intolerance/warsan-shire-home.

(14)

fortress Europe and who are very much affected by the anti-immigration policies, stereotypes,

and unjust representations in the media.

Edward Said defines refugees as ‘a creation of the twentieth-century state.’27 Moreover,

he claims that ‘[t]he word “refugee” has become a political one, suggesting large herds of innocent and bewildered people requiring urgent international assistance.’28 Just like Said,

Darko Suvin also notes that displacement is a characteristic of modernity. He defines displacement as ‘the sense of feeling alien and out of place, a widespread unease sometimes deepening into despair, that seems so intrinsic to the experience of modernity.’29 Refugees are

people who desire a better life for themselves and their families, far away from threats and dangerous circumstances. They are people who risk everything anchored solely in the hope that somewhere else, life will treat them better. They are ‘damaged humans’30 who have

experienced loss in all possible ways, having lost their loved ones, having been deprived of the comfort of their homes, and of the ability to speak their own language, thus being unable to express their feelings and making themselves understood in a new context, or as Hannah Arendt accurately puts it:

We lost our homes, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in the world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings.31

The refugee is alienated from everything he knows. His struggle for a better life does not end when he reaches Europe – in fact that is when ‘the alienation of [his] soul’32 begins. Many

refugees arrive here all alone, confused, and not knowing what to do next. Besides this, upon arrival in Europe they become victims of human traffickers and mafia networks who recruit them for sex slavery, drug trafficking, and human smuggling, and exploit them for their own profit.33

27 Edward William Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays (London:

Granta Books, 2002), 312.

28 Ibid., 312.

29 Suvin, ‘Displaced Persons’, 107. 30 Ibid., 123.

31 Quote from Hannah Arendt’s Imperialism in Suvin, ‘Displaced Persons’, 116. 32 Suvin, ‘Displaced Persons’, 119.

33 As it happens in Italy and Greece. For more information, check Helena Smith, ‘Refugees in

Greek Camps Targeted by Mafia Gangs,’ (2016) and Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani and Harriet Dedman, ‘The Mafia and a Nigerian Gang Are Targeting Refugees in Sicily,’ (2017).

(15)

In Orientalism, Edward Said argues that the Western representations of the Orient are unfaithful – misrepresentations based on stereotypes, false ideas, and prejudices. The Enlightened West is constructed in opposition to the Orient, so that the West is everything the Orient is not. Nowadays, Europe defines itself against Islam. These representations are problematic because they make false generalisations that influence the way in which people perceive the ‘Others’ and act towards them. What Ferris pointed out in 1993 is still the reality of today: ‘European governments talk of “uncontrolled migration” as a security threat […] Racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia are increasing throughout Europe as scapegoats are sought for economic and political problems.’34 Right-wing political parties are exercising a

politics of fear, creating anxiety about a possible Islamic invasion.35 Populists believe

‘immigration corrupts and culturally destroys both the host and immigrant societies.’36

According to them, immigration is a threat for national identities and cultures. But migration is a right that every human should possess and thus, it cannot be stopped. Immigrants are believed to disrupt the homogeneity of Europe and populists wish Europe could go back to its pre-immigrant state. Historically, such a Europe has never existed, because ‘Europe has been a continent of emigration’ as well.37 Nonetheless, populists forget how Europeans travelled to

the colonies to make their fortunes, how between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s, over 50 million Europeans moved to the Western hemisphere in what pre-2016 was called ‘the greatest recorded migratory flow of all time,’38 how after the First World War, millions of people were

displaced in the Balkans and elsewhere,39 how the Second World War caused ‘30 million

displaced people throughout Europe.’40 Colonialism, imperialism, the two world wars and all

the conflicts that followed are part of Europe’s history, and the Europe we know today is the result of all these events we rather overlook. Moreover, the populist ideology is engaging with the concept of cultural fundamentalism, which ‘legitimates the exclusion of foreigners [or] strangers…[on] the assumption that relations between different cultures are by “nature” hostile

34 Ferris, Beyond Borders, 242.

35 As shown by Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean

(London: Sage, 2015) and Anouk de Koning and Wayne Modest, ‘Anxious Politics in Postcolonial Europe,’ American Anthropologist 119 (2017): 524–526.

36 Chiara De Cesari, Ivo Bosilkov, Arianna Piacentini, and Ayhan Kaya, ‘(Why) Do

Eurosceptics Believe in a Common European Heritage?,’ in European Memory in Populism:

Representations of Self and Other, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2020), 35.

37 Ferris, Beyond Borders, 243. 38 Ibid., 243.

39 Ibid., 243. 40 Ibid., 243.

(16)

and mutually destructive.’41 According to this argument, xenophobia is an intrinsic aspect of

humanity, which makes our fear of ‘the Other’ absolutely normal. In a world where populism is rising, refugees have few chances to be understood and treated as individuals in need of protection and not as enemies coming from distant lands aiming to invade Europe and impose their threatening culture onto it.

3.2 The Subaltern

Another theorist who discusses the power of representation in her most famous essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ published in 1988, is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. It was her who, inspired by Antonio Gramsci, introduced the term ‘subaltern’ into the post-colonial discourse. The subaltern is the ‘Other’ who is being silenced and oppressed by the West. Inspired by the Marxist discourse, Spivak argues that the poorest people in the world are the most powerless, having no voice in society. When talking about humanness, Judith Butler argues that some humans have to struggle to gain it, because ‘some humans qualify as human,’42 while others

do not. In this sense, the subaltern is the human who struggles to be recognised and treated as such. Although the title of this essay presents the question of whether or not the subaltern can speak, Spivak is in fact trying to show that even when the subaltern can speak and is indeed speaking, he cannot be heard because he is not listened to. Spivak combines different theories, namely Marxism, and Deconstruction which help her build her argument that oppression happens as a result of such factors as social class, gender, race, and degree of education. It was one year later, in 1989, that feminist theorist and academic Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality, the theory according to which marginalisation is the result of multiple discriminatory factors – race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, occupation – are all categories that to a certain extent, bring power inequalities between individuals in a society. Ideologies and systems of knowledge created by the West produce what Spivak calls ‘epistemic violence’43 – harm inflicted against the ‘Others’ through discourse. Narratives and

representations are thus powerful as they can take part in a discourse used to justify real violence against other people. Riach claims that ‘[i]f the media or politicians portray a group as a threat […], this begins by damaging their reputation, and can then be used to justify the

41 Quoted in David Morley, Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity (Routledge, 2000),

248.

42 Judith Butler, Frames of war: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 76. 43 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?,’ in Rosalind C. Morris and

Gayatri C. Spivak Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 35.

(17)

use of force against them’44 or in the case of refugees, their rejection. Moreover, as Wright

argues that the images spread by the media determine people to construct their reality,45 images

can also impact viewers in many different ways, leading to feelings of pity, empathy, solidarity, or on the contrary, confusion, doubt, and fear. We tend to fear what is unknown to and different from us. European citizens mostly fear refugees because of their associations with ISIS and with different values, behaviours, and beliefs from our own. Our attitude towards these migrants reflects our deep fear, which in turn, is an emotional reaction to previous tragic events (9/11 attacks, Charlie Hebdo shooting, etc.). However, this fear can also be caused by doubt and incertitude that emerge from reading newspapers, watching the news, and seeing other pictures and texts distributed by the media controlled by specific political parties, as they mostly do not tell the public who these refugees are, where they are coming from, and the reasons why they are leaving their homes.

The subalterns ‘cannot represent themselves.’46 Therefore, their representations are

done by someone else – scholars, activists, lawyers, politicians – who ‘talk about them or in their place.’47As Riach rightfully affirms, Spivak’s essay aims to show ‘how representing

subalterns […] and so speaking on their behalf, effectively silences their own voices.’48 Stories

about refugees are mostly told by officials, journalists, and reporters who present a Western perspective on the so-called ‘crisis’, a uniform stereotypical description of this mass of people. Refugees scarcely speak in the media because the speaking is thus done for them. In Spivak’s opinion, whenever Western people write about or try to represent people from the developing nations, they are exercising their power, whether voluntarily or not. Spivak argues that even when we, Westerners, try to help in any way, our ‘sincere and deep desire to right wrongs is integrally bound up with Social Darwinist assumptions about what it means to help and about those who are represented as forever “in need” of our help.’49

44 Graham K. Riach, An analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the subaltern speak?

(London: Routledge, 2017), 27-8.

45 Wright, ‘Moving Images,’ 53.

46 Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?,’ 30. 47 Riach, An analysis, 28.

48 Ibid., 28.

49 Drucilla Cornell, ‘The Ethical Affirmation of Human Rights,’ in Rosalind C. Morris and

Gayatri C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 105-6.

(18)

3.3 Media Theories

3.3.1 Agenda Setting and Framing Theory

First put forth by McCombs and Shaw in 1972, the Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media suggests that the media ‘set the agenda for each political campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues.’50 Thus, the events portrayed in the media

are seen by the public as the most important issues in a society. Subsequently, McCombs argues that ‘[b]eyond attitudes and opinions, the pictures of reality created by the mass media have implications for personal behaviors, ranging from college applications to voting on election day.’51 While the agenda-setting theory suggests that news tell an audience what to think about,

framing theory proposes that they also tell the public how to think about certain issues. Framing represents the ways in which any piece of information is constructed. The framing theory was first coined by Erving Goffman in his book Frame Analysis, in which he explains that people are usually interpreting anything they come across through their primary framework, which he defines as a framework ‘that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful.’52 According to this theory, the frame is highly

significant as it can influence the way in which an information will be processed by its receiver. Within the primary framework, Goffman distinguishes between natural and social frameworks. The natural frameworks are those unaffected by any ‘willful agency’ either ‘causally and intentionally’ and whose outcomes are not determined by a guiding actor.53 On the other hand,

social frameworks ‘provide background understanding for events that incorporate the will, aim, and controlling effort of an intelligence, a live agency, the chief one being the human being.’54

Social frameworks employ specific drives, goals, and manipulations, and the outcome is the result of a prior ‘mental decision.’55 The conscious choice made by news writers when deciding

how to organise their ideas and present their findings represents the frame they choose in order to transmit a specific message.

50 Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, ‘The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,’ The

Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (July 1, 1972): 177.

51 Maxwell McCombs, ‘The Agenda-Setting Role of the Mass Media in the Shaping of Public

Opinion,’ 2003, 17.

52 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York,

NY et al.: Harper & Row, 1974), 21.

53 Ibid., 22. 54 Ibid., 22. 55 Ibid., 23.

(19)

3.3.2 Mediation and Mediatisation

During the last five decades, besides becoming mediated,56 politics also became

mediatised.57 Mediated politics designates ‘a situation in which the media have become the

most important source of information and vehicle of communication between the governors and the governed.’58 This means that people are dependent on media for information, which

implies that the media depictions of reality become the reality of the people. The mediatisation of politics represents the process through which politics becomes increasingly dependent on mass media and other mediated practices (online and social media).59 The media is responsible

for altering politics into ‘a process of mediated attention-seeking rather than of political representation and policy making.’60

Figure 1 shows the four dimensions of politics mediatisation, which are clearer to

observe in theory than in reality. Mediation is the first phase of mediatisation. The second phase is achieved when ‘the media have become more independent of governmental or other political bodies.’61 In the third phase, there is a reversal – the media has increased its independence to

the extent that political and social actors have to adapt to it.62 In this stage, the actual reality

loses its significance, as the ‘mediated reality matters more than any kind of actual or objective reality.’63

56 For more information on the mediation of politics, check Lance W. Bennett and Robert M.

Entman (2001) and Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs (1983).

57 For more information on mediatisation, check Hans M. Kepplinger (2002); Gianpietro

Mazzoleni and Winfried Schulz (1999); Winfried Schulz (2004).

58 Jesper Strömbäck, ‘Four Phases of Mediatisation: An Analysis of the Mediatisation of

Politics’, Journal of Press/Politics 13, no. 3 (2008): 230.

59 Michał Krzyżanowski, Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruth Wodak, ‘The Mediatization and the

Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16, no. 1-2 (2018): 6.

60 Ibid., 6.

61 Strömbäck, ‘Four Phases of Mediatisation,’ 236. 62 Ibid., 237-38.

(20)

Figure 1. ‘A Four-Dimensional Conceptualization of the Mediatization of Politics’64

In the fourth and last phase of mediatisation, political actors use media not only when campaigning, but also when governing and during the policy-making processes.65 In this phase,

the political and media logic are intertwined, making them indistinguishable for both the public and the political actors. As the media independence from politics increases, so does the commercialism in the media sector, because the media ‘belong to both the political and the economic systems,’66 making it equally important to both politicians and the public. As a result,

it can be concluded that the reality reported by the media changes according to its degree of independence. The main problem is that, as studies on media effects show, the media can have a significant influence on an audience,67 leading to the public believing whatever reality is

portrayed by them, whether accurate or distorted.

3.4 Visual Representations

Nowadays, media is a significant part of our daily lives. The Agenda Setting and Framing Theory illustrate the essential role media has in influencing the public’s perception of the world and leading to the formation of opinions, be these negative or positive. The media also illustrates events, thus representing reality. But whose reality is being represented? Who and what is represented or omitted? Who is doing the representation? And what are the implications of all these actions and decisions? As Spivak argues, ‘[t]his question of

64 Figure from Strömbäck, ‘Four Phases of Mediatisation,’ 235. 65 Ibid., 239.

66 Ibid, 242.

(21)

representation, self-representation, representing others, is a problem.’68 But what is meant by

representation and how does representation affect an audience? Representation itself is so crucial that many philosophers, linguists, theorists, and artists have discussed it for centuries. On the one hand, a picture can come as close to reality as nothing else would. According to Terence Wright, we live in a ‘visual culture’ that ‘relies more and more upon information provided by pictures.’69 Images are extremely important because, like text, they too carry and

share meaning. On the other hand, a representation will always be an imitation of reality, a fake attempt, always distinguishable from the real, as supported by Jean Baudrillard and his notions of simulacra and simulation.70 Baudrillard claims that ‘[r]epresentation stems from the

principle of the equivalence of the sign and of the real.’71 In his opinion, an image goes through

the following four phases:

it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality;

it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.72

On first glance, an image seems to be a faithful reflection of reality. Under analysis, it becomes visible that the image either masks or alters reality (phase 2), covers the lack of reality (phase 3), or is not at all connected to reality, being a replication (phase 4). Baudrillard engages with a post-modern sense of reality, one that is shattered, which implies the existence of multiple separate realities.

Susan Sontag also analyses the role of images and their relation to the real. In her book

On Photography, she states that through the act of photographing, the photographer grants

importance to his or her subject,73 the subject becoming visible to the photograph’s viewers.

Moreover, photographing could be seen as an attempt to bring something into existence. By photographing it, its presence is being acknowledged. Thus, a picture is ‘both a

pseudo-68 Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty and Sarah Harasym, The Post-Colonial Critic Interviews,

Strategies, Dialogues (New York: Routledge, 1990), 63.

69 Wright, ‘Moving Images,’ 53.

70 Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Precession of Simulacra,’ in Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas

Kellner Media and cultural studies keyworks (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006), 456.

71 Ibid., 456.

72 Ibid., 456. The italics are not mine.

(22)

presence and a token of absence’74 – the photograph proves that something exists, or at least

existed at some point. The ultimate goal of photography is bringing a distant reality closer to us. Sontag emphasises that what happens ‘there’, in the distant world, could also happen ‘here’. She wants photography to be powerful and able ‘to stop violence, to effect change, to protect.’75

But geography and culture create separate worlds, and events that happen ‘there’ do not motivate people ‘here’ to act. In this sense, media is a platform that establishes cultural, social, and other norms that work towards the creation of (cultural) dichotomies, constructing representations of ‘us’ in comparison to ‘them’. Cottle argues that:

[t]he media […] perform a crucial role in the public representation of unequal social relations and the play of cultural power. It is in and through representations […] that members of the media audience are variously invited to construct a sense of who “we” are in relation to who “we” are not, whether as “us” and “them”, “normal” and “deviant”, “friend” and “foe”, “the west” and “the rest”.76

The media is thus responsible for the construction of identities that value the label ‘Westerner’ more than ‘human’. This leads to a power imbalance between ‘us’ and ‘them’, which justifies the lack of interest in tragedies happening ‘there’. In the section ‘Screening the Other’, David Morley discusses the representation of ‘others’ in the media, especially on television. Basing his claims on Nigel Thrift’s arguments, Morley notes that ‘even if the modern media make other places and peoples seem less distant, we may still care less for others the further away they seem to be, whether in geographical or cultural terms.’77 This implies that if we cannot

relate to people from different parts of the world and from different cultures, we will not feel an obligation to care about what is happening to them. Furthermore, Miller claims that television viewers are simply spectators fallen into the ‘unconscious belief that the events which happen on television are going on in some unbelievably remote theatre of human activity,’78 the screen acting as a curtain separating us from the other world. Regarding this,

Judith Butler believes that we cannot relate to others unless we acknowledge precariousness as a universal human condition.79

74 Ibid., 12.

75 Sarah Sentilles, ‘Misreading Feuerbach: Susan Sontag, Photography and the Image-World,’

Literature and Theology 24, no. 1 (2010): 50.

76 Simon Cottle, Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries

(Maidenhead, England: Open University Press, 2000), 2.

77 Morley, Home Territories, 183.

78 Quoted in Morley, Home Territories, 184. 79 Butler, Frames of War, 28.

(23)

In her later book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag mostly focuses on war and war photography, arguing that the majority of us who have never experienced war understand it due to the images of war that are circulating in the media. Likewise, our understanding of the refugee crisis is limited to the content shared by the media, and dependent on visual representations. According to Sontag, photographs are ‘both objective record and personal testimony, both a faithful copy or transcript of an actual moment of reality and an interpretation of that reality.’80 Somehow contradictory, Sontag sees images both as faithful copies and as

interpretations of reality. She argues that without words accompanying a picture, images can be misleading and can lead to multiple interpretations. This is because ‘photographs represent the view of someone’,84 which implies subjectivity. The photographer has chosen to take a

picture from a specific angle for a specific reason. Thus, subjectivity plays a part in both phases: the taking of a picture and the interpreting of its meaning. She adds that ‘[t]he photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it.’85 She seems

to be an adept of relativism – meaning and interpretation are context-dependent. According to her, it all comes to the way in which a picture is used, to the frame and the context in which the picture is placed, and to the purpose and goal it has to achieve. Interpretations present social and political implications, and are always the result of an individual’s level of education, knowledge of the world, memory, experience, imagination, and cultural background. A picture unaccompanied by words is understood by the public in many different ways. Yet, an image followed by words is a tool used by someone or a group of people to share a specific message. In this regard, representation is always political. Both written and visual narratives are forms of representation that adhere to a specific (political) context and ideology. The image brings visual support for the narrative it accompanies, narrative which presents one interpretation only.

According to Jennifer Todd, ‘the symbol systems to which these pictures belong are partly constituted by the social relationships between the photographer, his/her employer, and his/her audience.’87 She believes there are ‘semi-institutionalized rules and roles’88 that news

80 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Picador Edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and

Giroux, 2004), 26.

84 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 31. 85 Ibid., 39.

87 Jennifer Todd, ‘The Roots of Pictorial Reference’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art

Criticism 39, no. 1 (1980): 53.

(24)

photographers must follow in order to ‘make pictures which provoke the viewers’ interests’ without offending their values.89 This relates to Sontag’s claims that the role and the power of

images is merely to shock us, when she says that ‘[n]arratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us.’90 Judith Butler is not convinced by this, arguing

that photographs do more than just haunt us; they are absolutely necessary as evidence for the atrocities that words are trying to prove. Without a picture as evidence, the words may never suffice in proving the truth. In this regard, Butler is questioning Sontag’s way of thinking – would it not be possible for narratives to also haunt us and for photographs to help us understand the truth? In her book, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Butler presents an exploration of the different ways in which the U.S. wars in the Middle East have been framed and how these certain frames affect the way in which people view the wars and their victims. Unlike Sontag, Butler believes that the interpretation of a picture should not be regarded solely as a ‘subjective act’,91 because the photograph itself can provide useful information – the

camera angle, the frame, and the posed subjects present a perspective and validate a point of view.92 Moreover, ‘the way that they are shown, the way they are framed, and the words used

to describe what is shown, work together to produce an interpretive matrix for what is seen.’93

In ‘Photography, War, Outrage’, she defines the phenomenon of ‘embedded reporting’ as ‘the situation in which journalists agree to report only from the perspective established by military and governmental authorities.’95 In this way, by deciding what journalists are allowed to

photograph, the government is in fact controlling the narrative, highlighting their own perspective.

In her book Compassion Fatigue, Susan Moeller discusses similar issues. Just like Sontag and Butler, Moeller engages with the ways in which media portray the suffering others. She notes that ‘media moguls have long known that suffering, rather than good news, sells.’96

She acknowledges the power of images, claiming that crises require pictures because a story without visual support is likely to be ignored. Especially when the crisis happens somewhere else, pictures are meant to help the public feel the gravity of the situation, provoking emotions.

89 Ibid., 54.

90 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 89. 91 Butler, Frames of war, 67.

92 Ibid., 65. 93 Ibid., 79.

95 Judith Butler, ‘Photography, War, Outrage’, PMLA 120, no. 3 (May 1, 2005): 822.

96 Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and

(25)

Images simplify reality, making it more understandable to the wide public. While words can provide meaning, ‘in our visual era, images are essential to effective communication – especially in the telling of the news.’97 This is because, images ‘have authority over the

imagination’98 – they engage with the viewer and induce a process of thought and

interpretation. Moreover, photographs also freeze time, being ‘the “residue” of continuous experience,’99 or as Roland Barthes claims, photographs represent ‘the collective memory of

the world.’100 We remember events more vividly due to the images accompanying them. To

give just one example, the whole world seemed to understand the gravity of the refugee crisis when they saw the picture of the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi laying on a beach. Contrary to Butler, Moeller argues that while pictures ‘can drill into the minds and hearts of their audiences,’101 they hardly inform the public of the context and causes of it. Thus, while there

is meaning in a picture, an image is not able to fully and accurately represent a situation that is much more complex than a single depiction. She believes the role of images is primarily to provoke emotional reactions, to catch and direct attention of an audience to a specific event, and to transmit a message instantly, unlike narratives which are ‘time and space-consuming.’103

Nonetheless, this instant message may be a distortion of reality. Both Butler and Moeller believe there is ‘an ideological construct […] behind every image. There are moral, cultural, social and political assumptions in the taking and the publishing and the viewing of images.’104

Photographs can be used to justify, initiate, or reinforce moral, cultural, social or political viewpoints. This proves that there is always intent behind a picture. The challenge is to discover it.

3.5 Refugees in the Media

All media representations of refugees contribute to ‘the elaboration of a transnational social imagination of refugeeness.’105 The portrayal of a refugee group as a confused, hectic

mass of bodies, a gathering of desperate individuals, does not provide any details about these

97 Ibid., 47 98 Ibid., 47. 99 Ibid., 44.

100 Quoted in Moeller, Compassion Fatigue, 44. 101 Moeller, Compassion Fatigue, 36.

103 Ibid., 47. 104 Ibid., 51.

105 Liisa H. Malkki, ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and

Dehistoricization,’ Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 3 (1996): 386, https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050.

(26)

people’s culture, history, motivation to flee, identity, opinions. These ‘mute victims’106 are thus

deprived of any kind of individual characteristics. Outside of the group, a refugee is anonymous – he has no identity. Such pictures only show helplessness, depriving their subjects of any agency. Additionally, Malkki believes photographs replace testimonies and silence refugees, leading to dehumanisation.107 Bleiker et al. observe that these representations of refugees

always being in a medium or large group, which make the audience unable to recognise any facial features, are responsible for reinforcing a politics of fear and are unsuccessful in generating ‘a compassionate political response.’108 They also note that when the suffering is

collective, the viewers are rather numbed than touched because suffering is portrayed as a wide human condition, as opposed to individual suffering, which is more likely to make the viewer feel compassion. In this way, ‘images of a lone sufferer humanise a political crisis’109 and the

lack of such images dehumanises it.110 Their study also mentions that governments can

influence the way in which asylum-seekers are portrayed in images through their regulatory policies. Following the Tampa incident in 2001, when Australia refused to allow the Norwegian ship MV Tampa – which rescued 433 refugees – to enter its territory, the government issued explicit directives for journalists, according to which they had to make sure that ‘no imagery that could conceivably garner sympathy or cause misgiving about the aggressive new border protection regime would find its way into the public domain.’111 This

proves that governments do hold an agenda that establishes what can and cannot be seen or discussed in public, and representations play a crucial role in this, because ‘they lie at the heart of how we see and understand the world.’112

3.6 Numbness and Compassion Fatigue

When saying that ‘a war becomes “real”’ when there are photographs,113 Sontag implies

that in order for us to acknowledge its reality, we have to see it with our own eyes. However, while this is true, the contrary is also valid – ‘after repeated exposure it also becomes less

106 Ibid., 378. 107 Ibid., 390.

108 Roland Bleiker et al., ‘The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees,’ Australian Journal of

Political Science 48, no. 4 (2013): 398, https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2013.840769.

109 Ibid., 408. 110 Ibid., 408.

111 Quoted in Bleiker et al.,‘The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees,’ 413. 112 Ibid., 414.

(27)

real.’114 She seems to believe that if we are exposed to these photographs regularly, we will

become accustomed to whatever they portray, and they will stop impacting us, hence losing their power. Sontag thinks the role of pictures is to affect our feelings. However, too many pictures will numb our emotions. She concludes that ‘the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark’115 and are not enough for changing the viewers’ point of view and encourage

them to take action.

Similarly, Moeller claims that ‘compassion fatigue’ is that which tempts journalists to find news that sell, to adopt and reinforce simplistic, formulaic expressions, choosing pictures of starving children to appear on the front page when representing crises of war, refugees, famine, because through this method, they can capture the public’s attention. Compassion fatigue is ‘an unavoidable consequence of the way the news is now covered.’116 She claims

that the media try to make us feel responsible for the tragedies that are occurring as long as we do not help. She gives the example of the Save the Children advertising campaign which appears on the first page of a newspaper. In this situation, the reader is confronted with two options: help the child or turn the page. Perhaps the first time a reader encounters such an ad, he will feel guilt and will maybe donate money. However, the second time, after lingering over the picture, he might turn the page. The third time, he will turn the page without any hesitation. The implication is that in turning the page, we become culpable and almost accomplices to the cruelty. Due to the impossibility of responding to every request for help, we might construct the belief that we are careless, that we have got compassion fatigue ‘as if we have involuntarily contracted some kind of disease that we’re stuck with no matter what we might do.’117 A few

reasons that cause compassion fatigue are the plethora of catastrophes happening in the world,118 the remoteness of the crises which turns these tragedies into unrelatable events to

people who are far away from the danger,119 the sensational way in which crises are reported

which make us feel that some situations deserve more attention than others,120 and the

formulaic coverage of crises that give us the impressions that we have seen this news before.121

To sum up, compassion fatigue establishes once news pass from page-turners to the public

114 Ibid., 105. 115 Ibid., 103.

116 Moeller, Compassion Fatigue, 2. 117 Ibid., 9.

118 Ibid., 11. 119 Ibid., 12. 120 Ibid., 14. 121 Ibid., 13.

(28)

turning the page.122 Compassion fatigue is the ‘result of inaction’123 and once it establishes, it

will cause further inaction.

3.7 The Spectacle of the World and the Politics of Pity

Compassion, humanitarian altruism, and the question of whether or not we are able to show empathy and kindness, are related to what Hannah Arendt called the ‘politics of pity’. To tell someone that he or she has to be affected by a ‘spectacle of distant suffering’124 (as some

media seem to be doing) is not ‘enough to satisfy the demand for commitment to action.’125

The politics of pity requires two specific features. Firstly, it asks for a distinction between the unfortunate – those who suffer, and the fortunate – those who do not. Secondly, there must be a focus on the process of looking and on what is seen. That is the ‘spectacle of suffering.’126

The politics of pity does not focus on action directly, nor on the power of those who are strong over those who are weak, but on observation.127 Crucial is the observation of the suffering by

those who do not share their suffering, but watch it from a distance. The politics of pity is centred around luck, rather than merit, the unfortunate being considered victims – people affected by acts of terror or famine do not deserve their condition, but are rather unlucky to experience them. For the politics of pity to be effective, the spectator must be engaged, and for this to happen, he must be at a specific degree of proximity: distant enough to separate one from the other, but close enough for the fortunate spectator to be able to observe the other. According to Arendt, the spectacle of misery does not necessarily lead to a politics of pity, because the suffering of the unfortunate may be ignored by the spectator. In other words, Arendt is talking about the compassion fatigue that affects the passive spectator and makes him unable to feel pity for the suffering, consequently turning him into ‘an active accomplice of those who directly caused the sufferings of the unfortunate.’128 The media is the perfect

mediator, providing the spectator with a spectacle. However, in the case of TV news for

122 Ibid., 14. 123 Ibid., 52.

124 Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999), xv.

125 Ibid., xvi. 126 Ibid., 3.

127 ‘The words le peuple are the key words for every understanding of the French Revolution,

and their connotations were determined by those who were exposed to the spectacle of the people’s sufferings, which they themselves did not share’ from Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 75.

(29)

example, the spectator hears a story told to him by a reporter who receives the information from an eye-witness. Due to the multiple layers and actors involved, the spectator chooses whether or not to believe the story and trust the information, determining the spectator’s decision to act or change the channel.

3.8 The Documentary

So far, I have talked about discourses, media, representations, and their power upon the subaltern, or in this case, the refugee. My paper is however, not about photographs, but about documentary films, topic that has not been discussed neither by Sontag, nor by Butler, nor by Moeller. Even though both are forms of representation of reality, both having a maker, a subject, a viewer, a reason, a purpose, and most probably a frame they adjust to, a film is more complex than a photograph. James Monaco argues that films are ‘agencies or channels of communication.’129 Thus, film is a way of communicating a message. In the case of

documentary films, the message contained is supposedly the truth. Moreover, film is usually self-explanatory. In this regard, ‘the great thing about literature is that you can imagine; the great thing about film is that you can't.’130 One could substitute the word literature with

photograph and this claim would still be correct. While a picture challenges the viewer’s imagination in the process of interpretation, a film leaves little space for imagination because the film itself provides more information. The documentary is both artistic and political. However, it is important to clarify that a documentary should be non-fictitious. As Currie puts it, documentaries are ‘filmic narratives, the images of which support the narrative in virtue (mostly) of their being photographic representations.’131 In a documentary, the meaning is not

imposed, but is conveyed by the depicted images. Thus, if we were to define the documentary film in simple terms, we could say that:

1. documentaries are films about reality – they illustrate something that actually happened;

2. documentaries are about real people, not actors playing a role;

3. documentaries tell real stories about events that happened in the real world.132

129 James Monaco, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2000), 63.

130 Ibid., 158.

131 Gregory Currie, ‘Visible Traces: Documentary and the Contents of Photographs,’ Journal

of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, no. 3 (July 1, 1999): 296.

132 Bill Nichols, ‘How Can We Define Documentary Film?,’ in Introduction to Documentary

Narratives of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ and the Power of Visual Representations: A Study of Different Portrayals of Refugees in Documentary Film