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NOTEBOOK
The Face of Evil
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Post date 06.13.02 | Issue date 06.24.02
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There are two things about the Daniel Pearl video that are unforgettably
shocking. The first, of course, is the sight of his murder. Even as he looks into
the camera and utters the statements that his captors demand that he utter--a
confession of his Jewishness, followed by a confession of the sins of
America--there is a good, genial look in his eyes, and a complete lack of
despair in his voice; and then suddenly he is on the floor and a knife is passed
along his throat and his severed head is raised by a hand in a white sleeve, and
your heart breaks for this obviously lovely life destroyed in some low, godless
corner of a deranged world. These are the images that a website called
prohosters.com decided to keep online despite FBI demands that they remove
them and that The Boston Phoenix controversially chose to link to. The
images are, to put it mildly, tasteless; but surely there are times when truth is
more important than taste. Why should Americans not see the actual savagery
of some of our actual adversaries? The squeamishness of some critics of the
video's distribution is certainly not owed to any mixed feelings about what it
depicts, or about American policy in Muslim lands. No, it appears to be a more
generalized squeamishness about the reality of the universe that the video
shows: about the facticity of evil. This fear must be fiercely resisted, if we are
to have clarity about the struggle in which we now find ourselves. For this
reason, a viewing of this hideous video is as instructive an experience as it is a
shattering one. But then there is the other shocking thing about this little snuff
movie: It is a commercial. Pearl's doomed talking head is isolated within the
blackened frame and surrounded by bubble-like images of the intifada.
Moments before the tape's grisly climax there appears a photograph of Ariel
Sharon and George W. Bush at the White House. There is a primitive
soundtrack of thumps, sounding alternatively like drums or bombs. The
anonymous executioner lifts his victim's head again and again, in a kind of
triumphal refrain, and there appears an announcement that this has been
brought to you by the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan
Sovereignty. That obscure anti-American and anti-Semitic groupuscule then
lists its demands, which include the release of the F-16s the United States has
not yet delivered to Pakistan. The F-16s! So the images may be raw, but the
footage is not raw: This is a political advertisement, pure and simple. It was
produced and edited and titled the way advertisements are produced and
edited and titled. Like all advertisements, it was designed to appeal to a
particular audience. The assumption of the makers of this advertisement was
that it will not inspire only horror, but also admiration. Once the genre of what
you have seen begins to sink in, so does a sickening feeling of just how twisted
is the environment in which these enemies of ours prosper. And what remains
in the mind once the "credits" have rolled is not merely disgust, but also the
conviction that the only right and proper response to this variety of
anti-Americanism is American power. |
