Close Reading Images: James Blake Miller, the "New Marlboro Man"

Close
Reading
Images:
Going
Deep
into
Two
Dimensions

Sunday, September 18, 11

Recently,
some
of
his
Marine
buddies
have
been
calling
Miller

up,
crying
drunk,
and
remembering
their
war
experiences.
Just

like
Papaw
Joe
Lee
used
to
do
when
Miller
was
a
boy.

"There's
a
lot
of
Vietnam
vets
...
they
don't
heal
unIl
30,
40

years
down
the
road,"
Miller
said.
"People
boMle
it
up,

become
angry,
easily
temperamental,
and
hell,
before
you

know
it,
these
are
the
people
who
are
snapping
on
you."

Jessica
interrupted.
"You're
already
like
that,"
she
said.

She
recalled
her
own
ﬁrst
glimpse
of
the
Marlboro
Man
-‐-‐
an

image
seen
through
tears
of
relief
that
he
was
alive,
and

misery
at
how
worn
he
looked.

"Some
people
thought
it
was
sexy,
and
we
thought,
'Oh,
my

God,
he's
in
the
middle
of
a
war,
close
to
death.'
We
just

couldn't
understand
how
some
people
could
look
at
it
like

that,"
she
said.
"But
I
guess
for
some
people
it
was
glory,
like

patrioIsm."


• Photographs are not actually objective
• They come from individual perspectives
• They often perform specific jobs
• They contribute to familiar narratives
• They often make arguments
• They work both directly and indirectly


• What job does it do?
• What argument does it seem to
make?
• Why are we seeing it?
• What story is it telling?
• How do different viewers interpret
the image?


Consider its
elements:

• Close focus on the face
• Face painted, dirty, bleeding
• Cigarette hanging loosely, almost casually
• Smoke billowing around and in front of the Marine’s face
• Eyes squinting, looking “over our shoulders”: reads of
alertness, “hard edge,” almost reminiscent of James Dean
• Little to no background or terrain, except desert gray
• Face framed by the helmet and the strap


Consider its
context:

• After a day of bloody fighting during the battle for Fallujah
• At that point, this battle had claimed more American lives
than any other campaign in the Iraq war
• The battle for Fallujah was fought door-to-door, in the streets
and in the houses, instead of from the air or from a distance.
• The Iraq War was beginning to become less “popular” back in
the US, but still held support among a majority of Americans.


Consider its
elements:

• Once more: focus on the face, but in profile, with hand
loosely up
• Face is clean—and looks radically different. Rounder, softer,
much less strong.
• Cigarette is still here, but it feels very different here: the hold,
the ash—even the length—all seem less at ease.
• Eyes look away, now downward: feels like regret, like loss.
• We see part of the USMC tattoo—but it’s upside down and
partially obscured.


Consider its
context:

• 2007: near the end of the Bush administration. The war is
much less popular, and more than half of the American public
are now in favor of withdrawal.
• It had become hard to identify, clearly, why the US was still
fighting in Iraq: many used the word “quagmire” to describe
the war.
• The article was talking about the difficult conditions soldiers
returned to in the US, and of the toll that the war had taken
on them.


Consider its
elements and
context


To
wrap
up:
• Photos
feel
objecIve—they
feel
like
the
truth
• At
the
very
same
.me,
they
tell
stories
and

support
arguments.
• Both
photos
were
wholly
and
completely
true.
• Both
supported
radically
diﬀerent
stories
and

arguments—about
the
Iraq
War,
about

heroism,
about
us—even
about
smoking.


Close Reading Images: James Blake Miller, the "New Marlboro Man"

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Plus de Ian Sherman

Plus de Ian Sherman (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Close Reading Images: James Blake Miller, the "New Marlboro Man"