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Photographs of Falling Bodies and the Ethics of Vulnerability in Jonathan Safran Foer’S Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Chris Vanderwees

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Photographs of Falling Bodies and the Ethics of Vulnerability in Jonathan Safran Foer’S Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Chris Vanderwees Photographs of Falling Bodies and the Ethics of Vulnerability in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Chris Vanderwees Abstract: The article explores the ethical and political relationship between Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the photographs of those who fell (or leapt) from the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theorization of the ethics of vulnerability, the article briefly outlines ongoing debates around the photography of atrocity in order to suggest that rather than reaffirm tropes of American exceptionalism and victory culture in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Foer’s novel and its engagement with the falling body may prompt readers to consider ethical recognition and responsibility to others. Keywords: Jonathan Safran Foer, Judith Butler, September 11 terrorist at- tacks, photography, visual culture, ethics, trauma Re´sume´ : Cet article explore la relation e´thique et politique entre le roman Extreˆmement fort et incroyablement pre`s de Jonathan Safran Foer et les photo- graphies des personnes qui sont tombe´es (ou se sont jete´es) du World Trade Center, le 11 septembre 2001. S’inspirant de l’e´thique de la vulne´r- abilite´ telle qu’elle est the´orise´e par Judith Butler, l’article e´voque brie`ve- ment le de´bat re´current sur la photographie de l’atroce pour sugge´rer que le roman de Foer, dans son rapport e´troit au corps qui chute, ne renforcer- ait pas ne´cessairement, dans le sillage des attentats du 11 septembre, les lieux communs sur l’exceptionnalisme e´tatsunien et la culture de la vic- toire, mais inciterait plutoˆt les lecteurs a` re´fle´chir a` une e´thique de la reconnaissance et a` la responsabilite´ envers autrui. Mots cle´s:Jonathan Safran Foer, Judith Butler, attentats du 11 septembre, photographie, culture visuelle, e´thique, traumatisme © Canadian Review of American Studies / Revue canadienne d’études américaines 45, no. 2, 2015 doi:10.3138/cras.2014.010 To catch death actually happening and embalm it for all time is some- thing only cameras can do, and pictures taken by photographers out in the field of the moment of (or just before) death are among the most celebrated and often reproduced of war photographs. —Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others “In the most photographed and videotaped day of the history of the world,” Tom Junod writes, “the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo—the only images from which Americans were proud to avert their eyes” (216). Here, Junod specifically refers to Associated Press photogra- pher Richard Drew’s image of a man falling head first from the north tower of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.1 Although dozens of falling-body images were taken by both amateur and professional photographers alike, Drew’s image became the most notorious, notably appearing on page 7 of the New York Times on the day after the attacks. After 12 September, Drew’s image and others like it would rarely appear in newsprint again as a result of already well-documented corporate media self- censorship (Engle; Junod; Zelizer, About to Die). Jeffrey Melnick writes that there was 175 almost [a] complete media blackout when it came to presenting images of the dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of people who leapt (or Revue canadienne d fell) to their deaths from the World Trade Center . [M]ost mainstream media—after publishing or broadcasting an image or two—refused to offer up any other footage of bodies falling from the Twin Towers. (80) ’ These photos found their way into virtual form instead, where études américaines 45 (2015) they would be shared and copied onto Internet sites that freely publish images of graphic violence and death. Not only were these images relegated to obscure web sites, but “[i]n the first few years after the attacks virtually no major cultural figure dared to repre- sent the falling bodies of 9/11” (80). This trend was also present in literary depictions of the 9/11 at- tacks. Although there were a handful of novels that were released in the aftermath, prominent American novelists like Jonathan Sa- fran Foer, Jess Walter, Colum McCann, and Don DeLillo did not release their fictional responses to the terrorist attacks, all of which include representations of falling and falling bodies, until years after the event. Given the widespread censorship of these images, the delay in literary representations may initially seem as though authors were simply following the lead of media outlets. This delay, however, becomes more complex if understood not as (vol- untary) censorship but rather in light of Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of history and the event. In The Spirit of Terrorism, Baudrillard writes in response to 9/11 that [t]he whole play of history and power is disrupted by this event, but so, too are the conditions of analysis. You have to take your time. While events were stagnating, you had to anticipate more quickly than they did. But when they speed up this much, you have to move more slowly—though without allowing yourself to be buried beneath the welter of words, or the gatherings clouds of war, and preserving intact the unforgettable incandescence of the images. (4) What Baudrillard suggests, here, is the difficulty, for authors and artists, of processing and analyzing contemporary events, which are in constant flux, shifting and changing, rapidly producing new developments. If the initial reaction to photographs of falling bodies was predominantly one of abjection, repression, and cen- Canadian Review of American Studies 45 (2015) sorship, it seems that, as the years have passed, authors and artists 176 have begun to take their time with these images, incorporating and engaging with them in their works, giving them new meaning and providing a new context for their reception.2 “By the fifth anniversary of 9/11,” writes Melnick, “American artists and audi- ences seem to have agreed that the major taboos that structured immediate responses to the attacks had now been lifted” (91). As writers took their time to contemplate the images, literary discus- sions and representations of the falling bodies multiplied. It is now rare to find a recent novel about 9/11 that does not represent the falling bodies in some way, whether in language as part of the nar- rative or in visual terms, which may often take the form of a re- printed falling-body image within the novel’s pages. The novelist may partially attempt to contextualize or historicize these images, but most often, the photographs or descriptions of the falling bodies are included as part of a reoccurring metaphor or rhetorical argument put forward within the novel.3 Through their repeated use of the falling-body image, authors writing post-9/11 fiction provoke a number of questions. Why should we look at such images of violence and atrocity? What do these images communicate to us? What might be gained from con- templating them at length? These questions direct my analysis of both post-9/11 writing and my consideration of photographic re- presentations of corresponding atrocities, particularly falling bodies. In order to address these questions, I outline some of the ongoing debates around photographs of atrocities in order to con- textualize my contention that these photos can serve an important ethical function. Rather than figuring these images as exploitative or voyeuristic, I draw from Judith Butler’s and Emmanuel Levi- nas’s theorizations of ethics to argue that these images encourage recognition of a shared vulnerability, inviting viewers and readers to reflect on ethical obligations to one another. Once I outline these theories and corresponding debates, I explore how these ethics function in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I focus on Foer’s novel for a number of reasons. Like many post-9/11 writers, Foer refers to the falling-body image in his work. Unlike his peers, however, Foer also explicitly reproduces and slightly alters Lyle Owerko’s falling-body photograph multi- ple times in order to create a flipbook in the novel’s final pages. Many critics have written scathing reviews of Foer’s work, which I suggest are best understood in relation to the censorship of falling- body images in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as well as to the ethi- 177 cal debates that I outline. Ultimately, I contend that, rather than re- Revue canadienne d affirm American exceptionalism and victory culture in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Foer’s text prompts readers to consider ethical re- lationships between themselves and others. Although authors now widely explore the image of the falling body in their work, these images continue to be the site of a con- ’ études américaines 45 (2015) tentious cultural debate surrounding the ethical implications of looking at photos of atrocities. In The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield unravels many arguments against photographic representations of atrocity, arguments made by “some thinkers [who] believe that an imageless world would be a better one” (xvi). Linfield explains that critics often characterize images of atrocity as “pornographic” and “voyeuristic,” characterizations that lend themselves to argu- ments in support of censorship. Georgina Banita, for example, writes that the videos of falling bodies on the Internet “have mush- roomed into a network of exploitative clips whose very multiplic- ity and ready accessibility seem to gloss over the horrific loss of life” (73). In this case, Banita forecloses the possibility of nuanced debates surrounding the images, simply dismissing the clips as “exploitative.” Similarly, in Watching the World Change, David Friend notes that the falling-body images have also been likened to the stuff of snuff films, torture videos, and sado-porn .
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