Neda and All Her Sisters

Anne Applebaum puts the Neda video in context, by forcefully arguing that women's rights advocates—not Bush or Obama or Twitter—are behind the incredible energy in the Iranian vote and the protests: "The truth is that the high turnout was the result of many years of organizational work carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and, above all, women's groups, working largely unnoticed and without much outside help." She also explains why the presence of so many women on the streets matters:

For at the heart of the ideology of the Islamic republic is its claim to divine inspiration: The leadership is legitimate, and in particular its harsh repression of women is legitimate, because God has decreed that it is so. The outright rejection of this creed by tens of thousands of women, not just over the last weekend but over the last decade, has to weaken the Islamic republic's claim to invincibility in Iran and across the Middle East.

Dana, when you worried over the instrumentalizing of Neda's death, and what it means when a tape of one person bleeding her life out on the street catapults all around the world, and so becomes a propagranda tool, some of your commenters thought you were questioning the relevance of the death itself. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think you were making a subtler point—that no matter how relevant, Neda has been converted from a self into a symbol, and you wouldn't want that for yourself. I see that. I wonder, though, about calling the video a propaganda tool. (Snuff film just seems right, since that's literally what it is.) For sure the video is being circulated to send a message and stoke the fires of outrage, but the nature of its dissemination makes me think that calling it a propaganda tool for me is too unsympathetic. The man who sent it doesn't sound like he works for anyone. He sounds like a guy who smuggled his footage through the Iranian cyberspace censors, however he could, to get it viewed. YouTube and Twitter and CNN did the rest. If the video is propaganda, it isn't only that. It's also a collective howl. Impotent and even exploitative, but also a heartfelt expression of the hive mind.

 

Photograph of Iranian protesters by Louisa Gouliamaki/Getty Images.

Tags: women's rights; Iran; Neda video

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Emily Bazelon is a founding editor of Double X, and a writer and editor at Slate.

Comments

@LAWalker

By: rcwilliams83 | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 17:57

By your own admission, the category of "snuff films" (strictly defined) may very well be an empty set. I can see no good reason not to get some mileage out of the phrase, since it appears that it isn't being used to describe any film that actually exists.

@RCWilliams83

By: LAWalker | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 14:49

Try "death video" instead...

Not at all sadistic.

@LAWalker

By: rcwilliams83 | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 14:47

I'm not disagreeing with you about the historical signification of the phrase "snuff film." Obviously, the Neda film doesn't qualify. On the other hand, to a person who is seeking a "thrill kill" video, this one might do in a pinch. That issue can and should be a topic of conversation, here and elsewhere.

But in order to facilitate that conversation, we need some way of referring to videos that depict death in such a way as might appeal to prurient interests. The phrase "snuff film" has been appropriated here for that purpose, because it is close enough, and it saves us the trouble of having to mint an entirely new word. It's not like this is the first time that a word has taken on a broader signification than it had when it was first introduced into the vocabulary.

@ RCWilliams83

By: LAWalker | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 14:22

You write: "My main point is that, taken on its own terms, and outside the context of the present unrest, the video is indistinguishable from what you would term a "proper" snuff film."

So is the Zapruder film a snuff film?

In the "Neda video", we don't actually see her shot - only the aftermath.

If you and others want to examine what kind of "jollies" some people get from watching either "Neda" or "Zapruder," that's far different from labeling either a "snuff film."

Neither is a work of sadism.

LAWalker, I see what you

By: rcwilliams83 | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 14:14

LAWalker,

I see what you mean, that the cameraman doesn't intend to create a snuff film, but isn't there a sense in which the "snuffiness" of the film is in the hands of the audience? One person might see it as a document of the political upheaval in Iran, where another is just getting perverse jollies from it. The likelihood of the latter is greatly augmented by the fact that the victim is a young, attractive woman.

My main point is that, taken on its own terms, and outside the context of the present unrest, the video is indistinguishable from what you would term a "proper" snuff film.

NOT a "snuff film"...

By: LAWalker | Tue, 06/23/2009 - 13:58

Emily,

I like your commenting a lot, but...

You write: "Snuff film just seems right, since that's literally what it is."

No, it isn't.

Take a look at the history of the term "snuff film:" this term arrived in the '70s (or maybe slightly earlier) to describe films made for entertainment purposes of planned murders/killings. The belief was they were an "illicit" sadistic thrill kill captured on film/video to show to an audience. Poke around the internet -you'll see what I mean.

Though it's not clear any were ever made, they were clearly NOT films that just happened to capture a death/killing/murder. For instance, the Zapruder film is not a "snuff film." Capa's photo during the Spanish Civil War is not a "snuff photo."

Likening the unplanned photography of Neda dying in a political conflict to "thrill kill videos" is an ugly mistake that keeps getting perpetuated here.

Let's not continue muddying the waters by linking the "Neda video" to a sensational term from another era.