When "soul stealing" is not superstition

This post kind of falls into a “thought for the day” topic, though it is specifically about one of my ongoing subjects, which is how did we get into such a freak show society, to put it bluntly. I decided to write about an observation I’ve made for many years now because I think people are receptive to looking at things differently and more clearly.

Most people know from watching old movies the old stereotype about “natives” who first encounter the “white man” with a camera at first fear the camera because the natives believe that it “steals their soul.” (Again, it’s a sad truth that most of people’s knowledge of culture and history, such as it is, comes from the old movies who inadvertently preserved some truth in addition to their purpose of entertainment and escapism.) So yes, it is true that many native people feared cameras because they did believe that it stole the soul. Have you ever thought about the fact that while superstition is, in general, just false beliefs based on “magical thinking,” that this one example of “superstition” has proved out to be startlingly true??

Here is my standard declaimer: I am not about to bash photography or photographers in general and I enjoy good photography and like to snap landscapes myself. But if those of you who are cell phone with camera manufacturers AND those of you in the mainstream media, both entertainment and news, feel a little uneasy about what I’m going to say, you would be showing good instinct.

Let us first look at photography in general when it first came into usage during news reporting. I’d like to talk about one famous photograph, just to work with a familiar example. There was a famous, heart breaking and seminal photograph taken during the Vietnam War of a small girl, naked from her clothes being burned off by USA dropped napalm, screaming as she runs down the street, burned over her body. This is an example of an outstanding photograph because of its capturing of a pivotal truth in Vietnam, which was the brutality of the collateral damage. It also was outstanding because she became a stark representation of the mostly nameless and faceless civilians, and everyone who saw the photograph was correctly shocked and moved. It also was outstanding by the measure of personal photographer skill and luck in combination, as he or she was in the right place at the right time to take an incredible photograph, and do so skillfully. Just about everyone would agree that the photograph of the girl is one of the most important photographs of the century.

But what about her soul? How would you feel if forever and ever you had been defined as being a naked and burned girl running down the street? So obviously I am not saying that her soul was sucked into the photograph. I am asking you to think about what a slippery slope the camera and media have taken people on, reducing the total identity of both public and private figures to one shot, to one image, to one message. You are probably also thinking of the other famous Vietnam photograph, of the kneeling Viet Cong man being shot in the head by the standing South Vietnamese army colonel or whatever. Again, it was one of the most important photographs of the era since it brought into people’s homes what a battlefield and some would argue a crazed and unjust execution looks like, what it really means to “have one’s brains blown out” by a bullet. (Gore fans, it does not actually show that, but the shocking moment when the impact of the bullet causes his head to move and his face to contort). And now, forever, this Viet Cong guy is preserved in a photograph that summarizes his entire life as the moment the bullet hit his brain.

When such “message oriented” photography first became popular, people had only the mainstream TV news channels and the news papers and magazines for their news. So in a way it was a manageable problem and this is why it never occurred to the photograph takers and publishers that perhaps even the greatest photograph has a problem of distilling an entire person’s life and identity into one visual image of trauma and degradation. People would see such a photograph and be shocked, obtain the news or message from its viewing, and then turn off the TV or eventually throw away the newspaper or magazine that published it. So these first early incredible news photographs, often taken in war, had an impact but they as an object of reduction of the individual’s entire life did not linger. One would have to do some research in order to see that photograph again.

But now everything has changed. First of all, we’ve gone from professional photographers to millions of amateurs who want “the money shot.” Now our children are taking naked pictures of themselves and each others and instantly messaging them to each other. Second, instead of naturally encountering sadness or horror, let’s say on the battlefield, or in a crime ridden neighborhood, our children are staging “beat downs” and “bum fights” so that they can film and photograph degradation. Third we have stalkers who photograph their victims and who have no constraint at all. Young people, those of you born too young to remember the times of the camera that needed development, this was how stalkers and perverts were kept in line. People who worked in development centers, far from getting giggles from dirty pictures would turn such film over to the police. This is how we used to be able to stay on top of the perverts who photographed children, or naked neighbors. Decent people were outraged and that’s why we didn’t really have stalking laws in those days: it was very self-regulated. A pervert who photographed his or her naked neighbor, or who stalked children with a camera, was not able to develop his or her own pictures, in general. So the appetite for such behavior was cut in the bud the first time a pervert took his or her pictures in for developing, and ended up getting a visit from the local police, who would personally know the victims. So now, thanks to both the technology and the prurient coarsening of values, we have just about smoothed and paved and enabled the way for everyone to be a pervert, even cultivating those desires in our children. This sort of stuff was kept under control by the lack of enabling technology and by the personal involvement of the decent citizens who would not stand for having such pictures taken of their children, neighbors, family or even acquaintances or strangers. Therefore we now see that victims of child pornography, both professional porn makers and amateurs, have their pictures circulated for years and years, being reduced to “that child” in “that room” “doing that sex act.”

But I am not done yet in my criticism since I’ve only discussed the problem with photography. We now must look with honesty at the entertainment industry and celebrity “PR.” What a vicious circle of negative feedback that has become, doing nothing as noble as even what the early Vietnam War photographs genuinely claimed to be. Actors and actresses run on a hamster wheel, where they do incredibly stupid surgeries to “enhance their looks,” who when that is not enough have standard use of air brushing, pancake makeup and “lighting” to look as “hot” as possible, only to then “dress down” to “get into role” of looking like, you know, the ordinary freaks of society that they are supposedly portraying in their films. It’s viewed as “bold” if someone in a film looks “natural.” Suddenly being larger than a Size 0 dress is “making a statement,” you know solidarity with the unwashed fatsos. So actors and actresses role model doing sick, depraved and false things to their own bodies to look “hot,” and then they use technology to make the resulting images even more impossible to achieve, and THEN they act like they have talent to look like the “ordinary, unbeautiful people.” If that is not a “loss of soul” due to the slavery of the photographer or cinematographer, I don’t know what is. Even more disturbing, then, is the backlash of now defining the “money shot” as being celebrities in “embarrassing poses,” such as blowing their noses (due to colds not cocaine, LOL), wearing something unflattering, or having an unsightly bulge. I’m not even talking about self inflicted disasters, such as scum boyfriends who make and sell personal sex tapes. I’m talking about the expectations of the viewing public, where photography is used to build up and/or tear down a person by making an image that millions view, that lasts and that “defines them” in the triviality of the real or artificial moment. They teach millions of fans and role model to young people the schizophrenic views of themselves, and also by example tell them “not to mind” and instead “work with it.” And then we wonder when our own children use cell phones to be violent stalkers and perverts. These celebrities and their handlers have taught “how to have your soul stolen via photography and cinematography.” There is, however, a difference because the big money making celebrities outlive bad photographs and their poor choices, while the “average person” aspires to be like them, but having to live with the real coarsening and consequences of their willing or unwilling posing.

So now we must look at the whole problem of the film making industry. The problems are so obvious (the violence, the perversion, the boring dismantling of real families and substitution with hip vampire zombies) that I’m not going to discuss them here except in support of my point about the soul stealing nature of photography. Compare the films of the past forty years with the films of prior to that time. As silly as some of the epic films were of the “good old days,” one can actually watch them without having one’s soul stolen. People “back then” were trying to provide entertainment and that’s why it came to be called the entertainment industry. Sure, they wanted to make money too, but in general, despite the celebrity hi-jinks and personal bad decisions, actors and actresses of those times were moving within a stable set of cultural values and did not have an agenda of coarsening and depravity, of either themselves or their audience. Even an old fashioned horror movie tried to scare the viewer with a specific situation, not an implied depressive impending Armageddon that is inevitable and cannot be escaped. Actors and actresses today have used their faces and bodies to “brand” false and depressive soul stealing scenarios that are repeatedly mass marketed and forced upon the public. Even stinker films make money, either overseas or going straight to DVD. They exploit people’s genuine and normal hunger for escapism and entertainment. But knowing that people are constantly hungry, to use an analogy, they teach them to only accept depressive polluted food.

See, in the really olden days, when people used to go to live theater and vaudeville, if you saw something awful once, it may have an impact, but when you walked out the theater you did not take with you a video and an action toy for your children. The liberal and conservative dummies who defend the depravity and depressiveness of the entertainment industry like to point to violent Greek plays, for example, or the opera (even calling science fiction “space opera.”) They imply that violence and depravity were always strong themes in entertainment. Well, um, yeah, duh, but they did not film and photograph them, since the tech did not exist, and so a one time strong “entertainment” experience did not live on forever and ever. People used to walk to observe a street or a stage performance, view it, and leave. That is why even strong entertainment in pre-electronic media times was valid, authentic and self regulated, because the experience was not created and preserved in order to indoctrinate to coarseness and traumatic (or at best mindless) agendas. For the past forty years I have resisted viewing just about every movie for exactly that reason. Folks, I’m not one of the sheep. I know exactly what has been going on all along, and I hate seeing the damage that has been done to two generations now. The unbelievable explicit violence of “realism” that infects even the most worthy of films is excusable. Just when I think, “Oh, here is a great film about a US President that children could learn from and enjoy,” there is an obligatory “body covered with pox sores” scene or “leg being blow off in navy battle” scene. I have a surprise for you. In ancient theater they did not try to make the awfulness of battle, illness or crime as “realistic as possible.” I mean, duh, think about it. It’s entertainment to get away from the hopefully unlikely viewing of some such thing in reality. I don’t need, and my kids certainly would not need, to see puss sores being carved off of a suffering dying boy when they want to see a film about President John Adams. Even if one staged a strong scene in live theater, at least it’s not on film to hold the viewer hostage again and again.

People need entertainment and they need movies. But people are also broken and prone to coarsening and addiction. I do not understand the soul stealing and soul losing decisions of forty years of film (and TV) makers who have a deliberate agenda of imagining themselves as the Vietnam War era prize winning photographer and who instead codify dehumanizing thoughts, feelings and behavior. It is not exactly a coincidence that many who erupt in violent crime watch reinforcing films over and over again. Defenders of the crap in the media try to argue those instances are rare. That is not the point because the point is not the ones who erupt, but the vast majority of the viewing public that have become indoctrinated to depressive, explicit and negative agenda ridden “entertainment.”

Not a day goes by that local news somewhere does not report a young mother, father or “boyfriend of the mother” who doesn’t sexually abuse or just torture and beat the living shit out of a crying helpless baby. Every time comments are allowed, normal people are, of course, enraged. But there are always those who just focus on the “unfit parent” aspect. Well, duh? These are the generation who view a steady diet of people as being unreal, of pain and rage as works of art, as justifiable. So a crying baby enrages these people, and they beat the shit right out of that crying baby. You have two generations now of young people who have been deprogrammed of normal feelings of restraint, self comprehension and empathy. Liberals want to teach “empathy” in the classroom, while they stir the depressive rage and depravity on the “silver screen” and on the TV. In Boston an aunt has been arrested for beating her niece, including stuffing frozen hot dogs up her vagina. Everyone makes excuses for individual “drowning” such as this without admitting that the past two generations have been already swimming in the tidal tsunami of dehumanizing depressive sewage called “entertainment.” That’s not being “realistic” and it’s not being “edgy.” I don’t even go to the movies yet I cannot avoid knowing the “big scenes,” you know, like sexual ejaculation being in the hair of an actor or actress, and that is in a “light comedy.” Or, are you really so blind and not self aware that you do not see the correlation between endless mortuary, CSI and "slab" scenes of "forensic" entertainment and the ability of a young man or woman to take that stupid demanding ugly crying baby and bash every rib, poke out her eyes, and just get her to shut the hell up? Fill a person with rage and teach them that humans are props, and that is what you have as a result, just look around and stop denying for the sake of your craving of false power and money.

So those unsophisticated and naïve quaint natives were not so far off base when they feared the camera as being soul stealing. It’s been done.