02955 the Aesthetics of Violence OA

Political Violence and the Tellability of Tales Frode Helmich Pedersen It is a common perception that stories of sex and violence sell, and that it is therefore only to be expected that journalists and editors will, as a rule, favor stories about violence over narratives of a less dramatic kind. Not all stories of violence are equally publishable, however. Some stories of violence are intuitively understood to be “ft to print,” as the slogan goes, whereas others are, for a variety of reasons, deemed unsuitable for publication. How can we go about investigating this phenomenon? To what extent is it possible to ascertain the mechanisms that determine which stories of political violence are covered by Western news media and which are most likely ignored or suppressed? Two approaches to these questions come to mind. Te frst is the media critique put forward by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, where the central thesis is that the news stories that make the headlines in the established US press are the ones that tend to serve the interests of US state and corporate power. Te second approach 83 the aesthetics of violence is Slavoj Žižek’s critical analysis of the phenomenon of violence in his book Violence. Six sideways refections (2009), where his distinction between “subjective” and “objective” violence is of particular relevance to the question outlined above. While both of these approaches (which are primarily con- cerned with questions of ideology) are useful tools in any analysis of how Western news media cover cases of violence, they lack a theoretical perspective of the story format, which is almost always the form in which an individual phenomenon of violence is repre- sented and circulated. I do not here presume to introduce a brand new “narratology of political violence,” but will restrict myself to suggesting one particular possibility ofered by the narratological perspective, as a supplement to the two approaches just men- tioned. Tis third approach is based on the notion of “tellability,” coined by the sociolinguist William Labov in the early 1970s, relating to how certain types of story material seem inherently worth telling. Tis approach can explain certain cases of violent news stories that cannot be sufciently accounted for by the two other approaches. As a case in point, I will ofer the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose massive coverage in Western media cannot, in my opinion, be exhaustively accounted for through explanations that focus solely on ideology. Tis is not to say that “the tellability of tales” is beyond the reach of ideology, only that there are aspects to the quality of tellability that may break free from the ideological confnes that would normally prevent the story from being widely disseminated. Te Propaganda Model According to the “Propaganda Model” put forward by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, the selection process of which stories to print or not to print in US media is determined by 84 political violence and the tellability of tales what they regard as the basic function of the mainstream press, which is to serve the interests of US state and corporate power. As regards cases of large-scale violence, the model predicts that the media will always prioritize stories where the act of violence has been carried out by others, most preferably by the ofcial enemies of US state and corporate power and suppress, under- report, or misrepresent cases where the act of violence has been carried out by (or with the aid of) the US or its allies. Tis is illustrated, for example, in the authors’ comparison of the media coverage of the atrocities perpetrated by the Suharto regime in East Timor between 1975 and 1979 with the atrocities carried out by the ofcial enemy of the US, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia in the same period. Te New York Times devoted 1,175 column inches to the latter case, whereas only 70 column inches were devoted to the frst (in the period when the atrocities took place).1 Te authors explain this discrepancy by pointing out that “[a]trocities by the Khmer Rouge could be attributed to the Communist enemy and valuable propaganda points could be scored,” while the atrocities in East Timor had no such utilitarian function—quite the opposite: “[A]ttention to the Indonesian invasion would have embarrassed a loyal ally and quickly disclosed the crucial role of the United States in pro- viding military aid and diplomatic support for aggression and slaughter.”2 As the authors have elaborated elsewhere, the US media’s eagerness to present the reading public with outraged reports on the bloodbaths carried out by the ofcial enemy (Pol Pot) included numerous fabrications and fctions that went far beyond what had actually occurred.3 “Te propaganda model” rests on the claim that it is vital for the ruling classes to “manage and mobilize” the public from above in order to reduce popular control over the political system. Te role of the mass media is, according to this model, to make sure that the public is not properly informed about 85 the aesthetics of violence the most important political issues, thereby reducing the risk of widespread protests to the decisions made by the elites.4 When inquiring why some stories of violence are widely disseminated by the media, while others barely receive mention, Chomsky and Herman urge us, in each case, to ask the question: Cui bono? To whom is this a beneft? Tis is another way of saying that fundamental structures of power should never be ignored when one is reviewing media coverage of violent acts. Bearing in mind, as Chomsky and Herman keep reminding us, that “the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and au- diences) to other businesses (advertisers),”5 their model suggests that the basic pattern found in the investigation into US media coverage will be similar in other parts of the capitalist world. Objective and Subjective Violence Turning now to Slavoj Žižek’s discussion of violence, we should begin by taking a closer look at his distinction between “subjective” and “objective” modes of violence. By subjective violence, Žižek means the visible and spectacular violence committed by a clearly identifable agent, such as a terrorist.6 Trough the notion of objective violence, on the other hand, he directs attention to the invisible systemic violence that works to secure and support the smooth running of the societal machinery.7 Žižek also mentions a third mode, “symbolic violence,” which has to do with language, more precisely the way social reality is rendered meaningful through language. Symbolic violence occurs, for instance, when the kind of meaning a specifc use of language gives to social reality excludes certain parts of the population from the community of respectable citizens.8 Te main point in Žižek’s analysis is that Western liberal dis- course places far too much emphasis on subjective violence while 86 political violence and the tellability of tales ignoring or downplaying objective violence. Te false premise in mainstream commentary about cases of subjective violence is, according to Žižek, that the violent act happens against a back- drop of a normal state of afairs, which is seen as non-violent. Tis is an illusion, creating the false impression that eruptions of subjective violence, like the one that happened in the Parisian suburbs in 2005, come out of nowhere and therefore call for an explanation focusing solely on the subjectivity of the violent actors. Te introduction of the term “objective violence” helps to unveil this illusion, to the beneft of a more system-oriented understanding of the violent acts. Te usefulness of this term can be spelled out in two steps. First, the notion of objective violence can be used to explain cases of subjective violence. Te explanation ofered by Žižek elegantly contradicts the standard conservative narrative on violence, where violence is seen as an expression of man’s deepest nature. When humans are regarded as inherently violent, strong societal institutions like the church, school, and family are seen as indispensable to any civilized society. As Edmund Burke famously put it, man needs a “sufcient restraint upon his pas- sions,” exceeding the kind of restraints he is able to put on him- self.9 In this view, civilized society is possible only through the repression of human nature, which is precisely what is ofered by these institutions. Put a little diferently: According to the conservative worldview, man is not suited for too much liberty, since an excess of liberty—or lack of constraints—will inevitably lead to violence and other forms of non-civilized behavior. Tus, when there is an eruption of violence such as that seen in the Pa- risian suburbs in 2005, the standard conservative impulse would be to point to the disintegration of the traditional institutions, like the school and the family, as the explanation closest at hand. By introducing the term objective violence, this argument is turned on its head. Viewed through the lens of this term, it 87 the aesthetics of violence is precisely the constant and “invisible” minimal level of objective violence associated with the repressive societal institutions that causes eruptions of violence of the kind that happened in Paris in 2005. Instead, then, of seeing public institutions like schools, the police, the courts, the military, the church, and others as necessary means of keeping violent urges in check and thereby securing the normal state of non-violence, they are now seen as efectively creating the daily seeds that lead to such violent acts. Second, the notion of objective violence helps us rethink the question of blame with regard to concrete instances of subjective violence.

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