Conclusion
We need the resources of pictures that have iconic relationships to reality for witnessing and documenting and for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure. We also need to resist their simple persuasions so that we can understand them as a communication in a context that is material, pertaining to how it is made, and social. While there is promise in a younger generation of sophisticated media consumers, in the interest of justice (and legitimacy) we ought to make much more self-conscious efforts to make sure that visual media literacy is regarded as crucial to educated people and most especially for all those involved in the justice system.
NOTES
[1] It is outside the scope of this chapter to discuss the meaning of this suggestion within Wiesel’s life and work. Given that he was a Holocaust survivor, and the Nazi regime that carried it out was obsessed with visual imagery, it is not surprising to this author that he would make such a suggestion.
[2] Justice Scalia is either unfamiliar with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ writing on photography or doesn’t agree with him. Oliver Wendell Holmes:“There is only one Coliseum or Pantheon; but how many millions of potential negatives have they shed,–representatives of billions of pictures,–since they were erected! Matter in large masses must always be fixed and dear; form is cheap and transportable. We have got the fruit of creation now, and need not trouble ourselves with the core. Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful, grand objects, as they hunt the cattle in South America, for their skins and leave the carcasses as of little worth.” [Holmes]. While acknowledging the role of the sun (light) in making the picture, Holmes clearly saw both that people make photographs and that this activity was going to be socially transformative.
[3] Presence is of increasing importance in legal contexts. Our global economy is creating disputes across national borders, time zones, cultures, and there will be increasing debate around what is the required presence for trustworthy decision making with the use of technology to transcend limitations on actual physical presence, adding not just videoconferencing but virtual reality environments, avatars, etc.
[4] Being tasered is part of police and military training, so some victims of Tasers are, in fact, members of uniformed services.[TChris] Readers interested in arguments favoring widespread deployment of Taser technology can read a note arguing for municipal liability for NOT supplying officers with these weapons.[Nevins]’
[5] Richard Sherwin’s When Law Goes Pop takes up the blurring of law and popular culture. [Sherwin]. While this is certainly relevant, I discuss the video medium itself in the communicative stream and not so specifically its narrative characteristics, especially because tasercam video is without self-conscious storytelling strategies.
[6] It is also probably a mistake to assume that medical risks, and therefore potential harms, are the same for all these groups. We certainly need much more data in this matter.
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