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| Dzhokhar Tsarnaev capture pictures don't deromanticise this 'monster' | Dzhokhar Tsarnaev capture pictures don't deromanticise this 'monster' |
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| "THE BOMBER. How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster." | "THE BOMBER. How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster." |
| That's the cover of the latest Rolling Stone magazine. Or rather, that's the heavily emphatic text that appears in the bottom right hand corner of the cover below a romantic-looking portrait of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the teenager who is to face trial for the Boston marathon bombings. These words explain the magazine's use of the picture quite sufficiently. It's hard to see how it is making a hero of someone to call them in print "a monster." | That's the cover of the latest Rolling Stone magazine. Or rather, that's the heavily emphatic text that appears in the bottom right hand corner of the cover below a romantic-looking portrait of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the teenager who is to face trial for the Boston marathon bombings. These words explain the magazine's use of the picture quite sufficiently. It's hard to see how it is making a hero of someone to call them in print "a monster." |
| Yet the supposed "glamour" of Rolling Stone's Tsarnaev cover has become such a tasty subject for American outrage that Sean Murphy, a Boston police photographer, has released his own pictures of the suspect's capture as a protest against it. As he emerges from the shot-up boat where he was hiding, into the glare of police lights, in one image a bloodied Tsarnaev holds up a hand in a gesture of surrender. The red pin point of a sharpshooter's laser sight rests eerily on his forehead. | Yet the supposed "glamour" of Rolling Stone's Tsarnaev cover has become such a tasty subject for American outrage that Sean Murphy, a Boston police photographer, has released his own pictures of the suspect's capture as a protest against it. As he emerges from the shot-up boat where he was hiding, into the glare of police lights, in one image a bloodied Tsarnaev holds up a hand in a gesture of surrender. The red pin point of a sharpshooter's laser sight rests eerily on his forehead. |
| Another picture shows him leaning weakly against the boat, the blood on his face even more visible. | Another picture shows him leaning weakly against the boat, the blood on his face even more visible. |
| If anyone in the world is misguided enough to find what Tsarnaev stands accused of in any way heroic, or exciting, or remotely justifiable, Murphy's photographs are far more likely than the Rolling Stone cover to feed their fantasies. As he flops weakly against the boat the blood-spattered youth looks like he is auditioning for a Passion play: he looks like Jesus struggling to Golgotha. An entire history of Catholic images of righteous suffering can be read into Murphy's photographs. No wonder they were supposed to be kept under wraps – they do not help at all to deromanticise Tsarnaev. | If anyone in the world is misguided enough to find what Tsarnaev stands accused of in any way heroic, or exciting, or remotely justifiable, Murphy's photographs are far more likely than the Rolling Stone cover to feed their fantasies. As he flops weakly against the boat the blood-spattered youth looks like he is auditioning for a Passion play: he looks like Jesus struggling to Golgotha. An entire history of Catholic images of righteous suffering can be read into Murphy's photographs. No wonder they were supposed to be kept under wraps – they do not help at all to deromanticise Tsarnaev. |
| But there is no danger of Tsarnaev becoming a youth idol as a result of the Rolling Stone cover, even with the unintentional help that the police pictures clumsily lend to such an imaginary fandom. This row is an example of the way modern culture overvalues and overemphasises images at the expense of reality. | But there is no danger of Tsarnaev becoming a youth idol as a result of the Rolling Stone cover, even with the unintentional help that the police pictures clumsily lend to such an imaginary fandom. This row is an example of the way modern culture overvalues and overemphasises images at the expense of reality. |
| It is a troubling reality of American life, indeed life in all democracies today, that after all the horror of 9/11, all the wars, all the homeland security, two young men living amid western prosperity and youth culture and modernity could apparently turn to mass murder in the name of politicised religion. How did it happen? How did someone who looks like he could be in a band end up here? That seems a reasonable, in fact a necessary, question for Rolling Stone to ask. To get angry about the use of his image is a refusal to investigate the human narrative that produces (in the magazine's words) "a monster". | It is a troubling reality of American life, indeed life in all democracies today, that after all the horror of 9/11, all the wars, all the homeland security, two young men living amid western prosperity and youth culture and modernity could apparently turn to mass murder in the name of politicised religion. How did it happen? How did someone who looks like he could be in a band end up here? That seems a reasonable, in fact a necessary, question for Rolling Stone to ask. To get angry about the use of his image is a refusal to investigate the human narrative that produces (in the magazine's words) "a monster". |
| This refusal to interrogate violence is America's biggest problem, and it long predates the attack on the World Trade Centre. The very existence of the death penalty is a denial of the humanity of criminals. To reject that common humanity is to fail to learn, and without learning from disaster how do you prevent it recurring? You get into an endless cycle of wars and drone strikes instead of trying to solve the terrible historical mess that turns faith into a bomb. | This refusal to interrogate violence is America's biggest problem, and it long predates the attack on the World Trade Centre. The very existence of the death penalty is a denial of the humanity of criminals. To reject that common humanity is to fail to learn, and without learning from disaster how do you prevent it recurring? You get into an endless cycle of wars and drone strikes instead of trying to solve the terrible historical mess that turns faith into a bomb. |
| So yes – on the cover of Rolling Stone this "monster" looks all too human, and he looks even more so in the pictures of his arrest. Monsters walk among us and they are us. If you cannot face that, how can you begin to map the minotaur's labyrinth and decode the nature of evil? | So yes – on the cover of Rolling Stone this "monster" looks all too human, and he looks even more so in the pictures of his arrest. Monsters walk among us and they are us. If you cannot face that, how can you begin to map the minotaur's labyrinth and decode the nature of evil? |
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